


the burning rhythm in our hearts

by daisysusan



Category: One Direction (Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Sickfic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-01-01
Updated: 2013-01-01
Packaged: 2017-11-23 04:29:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 22,489
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/618075
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/daisysusan/pseuds/daisysusan
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Harry Styles, frontman of an indie rock band, had definitely not spared a thought for popstar Liam Payne since they were briefly on the X Factor together except perhaps for a bit of scorn. Definitely absolutely not. Not until the moment his band played right before Liam at a festival, anyway.</p>
            </blockquote>





	the burning rhythm in our hearts

**Author's Note:**

  * For [formerlydf](https://archiveofourown.org/users/formerlydf/gifts).



> Many thanks to [hanelissar](http://hanelissar.livejournal.com) and [cbomb](http://archiveofourown.org/users/cbomb) and [torakowalski](http://archiveofourown.org/users/torakowalski) for looking this over for me, and to everyone who read drafts of this and told me it wasn't catastrophically bad.

Partway through Harry’s pre-show ritual of trying not to be sick—because he’d been performing regularly for years and it was ridiculous—Nick saw fit to invite himself into Harry’s dressing room and mention that the person performing after him was Liam Payne.

On the bright side, Harry’s nausea was suddenly replaced by a resentful apprehension that coiled unpleasantly around the flare of something like anger in his stomach.

“You’re kidding, right?” he said flatly.

“No, not as such,” Nick said.

Harry resisted the urge to groan and bury his face in his hands, because he was pretty sure that would make him seem petty and immature and—fuck it, even if he was only twenty-two, he was going to act like he’d been in the industry long enough to keep his cool.

Even if he was going to have to put up with Liam Payne’s fans and—oh god, what if he actually had to put up with _Liam Payne himself_?

“How awful is the audience?” Harry asked.

“Twelve. Very high-pitched. Not sure any of them will ever have heard of you.”

The wall was right over there, he probably had time to beat his head against it a few times before the concert. He really ought to tell Matt and Aiden—not that they were likely to care—but Harry felt like it was his duty to make sure they were prepared for the screaming girls.

“Mate,” Matt said reasonably, “It’ll be a whole new audience for us. Maybe they’ll like some of the songs and buy them or tell their friends.”

Unsurprisingly, they were better sports about the situation than he was, but Harry had never claimed to be less of an arse about Liam than Liam fucking Payne was in general. Mostly because the only time he’d ever actually spoken to him, Liam fucking Payne had been an utter arse to him. There was absolutely no reason to go off on someone about the importance of focusing on music and the competition just because they asked if you wanted to go for coffee, even if you were both on the X Factor. So Liam Payne, who everyone thought was some sort of god of sincerity and openness, was a twat in person.

Harry resisted the urge to say that he didn’t want a bunch of hyperactive, screaming twelve-year-olds liking his records, because he was pretty sure that was not at all the proper way to make a living as a musician. “I suppose,” he said instead.

“You lot are on in twenty,” someone yelled through the door, and Harry hauled himself out of the room because Matt and Aiden had a horrifying number of pre-show rituals, none of which he wanted to have the extreme misfortune of witnessing. Again.

Backstage was its usual mess of too many people trying to do too many things in too little space—all while being as silent as possible. Harry wasn’t sure who was performing; he ought to ought to have paid more attention to the other acts at the festival, but he didn’t actually think he’d like most of them and besides, that’s what he had Nick for. Whoever it was was quite loud, which was working out very well for the masses of people making horrifying amounts of noise.

Harry found himself a reasonably uncrowded corner and waited for the hubbub to die down. When that happened it would mean that he needed to start getting ready to perform. He flicked through apps on his mobile, trying to decide if he had time to play a mind-numbing game, and if the loss of focus and nausea would be worth the distraction. It took him a few minutes to notice the bloke sitting at the far end of the mostly-empty corner with a guitar, strumming is so softly Harry couldn’t actually hear him.

Harry tried to be inconspicuous as he watched the man, but he apparently failed. The man—boy, maybe, it was hard to say in the half light backstage—beckoned him over with a smile and a tilt of his head and Harry went.

“You’re Harry Styles, yeah?” he said, with the accent of someone who’d spent too many years in London but was clinging to a different region. Harry just smiled and nodded once; he was enjoying the soft strumming of the guitar too much to interrupt.

“I’m Louis,” the bloke said. “Er, Tomlinson. If I know your surname, it’s only fair, right?”

Harry smiled, catching Louis’s eye and leaning in a bit closer. “What are you playing?”

“Just some chords,” Louis said. “I’m not very good, my mate Niall’s teaching me.”

“What are you doing here, then?” Harry asked, letting his eyes follow Louis’s fingers as they made repetitive movements against the guitar.

“Oh, my best mate’s performing and he asked me,” Louis said absently.

“That’s sick.”

“Right?” Louis smiled properly, then, and his whole face lit up. Harry felt a sudden and overwhelming need to make Louis smile like that about him.

It didn’t feel odd to slide over until he was pressed against Louis’s side to watch him strumming the chords slowly—Harry couldn’t identify them exactly, but he could mostly pick out the repetitions. “Do you play at all?” Louis asked him, barely audible.

“Not the guitar much,” Harry said. “Mostly the bass.”

“Oh, fancy.” Louis grinned at him. “Don’t you have to go play a gig or something?”

“No such thing,” Harry answered, grinning back.

“Want to come for a drink with me and my mates after?” Louis said after a short pause.

Harry thought about Louis’s smile and the comfortable way they fitted against each other, and then realized he’d started saying yes before he did any of that. “Sounds brilliant,” he added, actually paying attention to that bit.

\--

In the end the gig went surprisingly well, Harry was forced to admit. It had been patently obvious that no one had actually been there to see them – even as a fairly small band there were usually a handful of people singing along and waiting for autographs after and there had been none of that – but at least the screaming girls hadn't been actively unpleasant. 

“I don’t want to imply you might hate Liam Payne irrationally because he did better on the X Factor than you,” Matt was saying, but Aiden cut him off.

“No, that’s exactly what you want to imply.” Aiden looked unamused, which was an expression he usually saved for singing. “Even Zayn has got over it; he bought Liam’s last album.”

Harry bit his lip to keep from saying anything genuinely horrible like _I was better than Zayn on the X Factor_ or embarrassingly petty like _how dare he, he’s my friend!_ Because he was an adult and adults didn’t do things like that.

However, he did have a perfectly valid reason to run off and leave Matt and Aiden to whatever their post-gig rituals were—and he was more than happy to remain ignorant about them.

“I’ve got an invitation to go out for drinks with someone who won’t accuse me of disliking a person on completely ridiculous grounds,” Harry said, scowling.

“Someone?” Aiden asked, because he was a prat. “Anyone we know? Anyone we’re going to accidentally see naked tomorrow?”

“No and—” Harry stopped. It seemed unlikely that they would meet Louis the following morning and even less likely that Louis would be naked but he didn’t want to rule that out entirely. If nothing else, Louis was fit and Harry was … not the pickiest person. Or so he’d been told. “Probably not,” he ended with.

And then Harry took off before they could torment him any more.

Louis was waiting outside for him, slouched against the wall in jeans that were nearly too tight and a jumper Harry would’ve thought hideous if he hadn’t spent years in a band with Aiden Grimshaw, whose jumpers were so hideous they might actually be slowly driving Harry insane. His hair was mussed, but he’d clearly styled it that way. Harry would not at all mind hooking up with him.

Louis smiled when he saw Harry approaching. “Everyone else has already headed to the pub,” he said, slinging an arm around Harry’s shoulders and pulling him in close. “They’re impatient bastards.”

It wasn’t until Louis opened the door to the pub that things started to go horribly wrong. Harry’d already texted Nick and Zayn the name of the place, which meant it was a bit late to change on account of Liam Payne sitting at the bar. Especially because Louis was walking in his direction, yelling “Li!” so loud that Harry could make it out even over the din of the club. Harry wasn’t sure if he wanted to melt into the floor or if he was just angry. Either way, it paralyzed him for long enough that he didn’t manage to unstick himself until Louis was standing in front of him, tugging playfully at Liam Payne’s curly hair.

Harry fucking hated the hair. He didn’t especially like anything about Liam Payne, from how he never smiled enough in interviews to the way he pretended to enjoy _everything_ , which was just not natural or right.

But the hair.

It was bad enough having to deal with the fact that Liam Payne existed and walked on the same planet as him, and sometimes interviewers who’d done their research properly asked him about the X Factor and whether he’d ever met Liam.

But Harry had spent about enough time ignoring people who screamed Liam’s name at him as he walked down the street and fending off the occasionally girl mad enough to chase him down. Because of the damn hair.

“Harry,” Louis said. “This is my best mate Liam.”

Harry tried not to scowl openly. “We’ve met,” he said, a bit terse but at least he didn’t call Liam an over-rated prick so that was something.

“You were on the X Factor with me, yeah?” Liam said, extending his hand. Harry shook it a bit grudgingly. Even if he was mates with Liam, Louis was still fit enough that Harry didn’t want to be rude in front of him.

There wasn’t any point in answering the question; Liam obviously knew the answer and Harry didn’t much want to rehash his X Factor experience. The only good thing that had come out of it was meeting Zayn and Aiden.

“Right,” Louis said, unsubtly covering the awkward silence. “Let me buy you both a drink, you had fantastic gigs tonight.”

Harry smiled at Louis, tried to ignore Liam, and reminded himself that he was too smart to turn down a free drink from a fit bloke.

\--

Some number of hours later—some number of drinks later—Harry was pretty pissed. Nick and Zayn had shown up and bought him more drinks, and then Zayn had wandered off and Harry wasn’t sure what happened but he thought it might have involved him trying to buy Liam drinks. Nick was draped against Harry’s side, whispering snidely about the people around them even though it was so loud and his words were so slurred that Harry couldn’t make out anything he was saying.

On his other side, leaning back against the bar on his elbows, was Louis. He was smiling, but his jaw went a little tight every time he made eye contact with Nick.

Liam was—Liam was _bouncing_. Liam had been bouncing the entire time they’d been there. Harry would have wanted to grab him by the shoulders and force him to sit down if doing that didn’t involve touching Liam, and also actually interacting with him.

Also it would have been a lot of work to move from where he was sitting at the bar, making faces at Louis and letting Nick mumble about something that might be why he didn’t like the color of Louis’s trousers. Zayn had managed to get Liam a bit tipsy, and they were giggling with a bloke who looked vaguely familiar—possibly one of the sound guys from the gig. Harry thought he might be Irish. Or maybe that was just the amount of beer he’d already downed.

“I’m going to piss,” Harry said, shoving Nick’s arm off his shoulder. It felt a bit odd to talk; he’d been communicating with Louis mostly through hand gestures and smiles, and Nick’s monologue of the reasons he didn’t like anyone in the pub didn’t necessitate much of a response. Harry’s words were more slurred than he’d anticipated, and the room swirled slightly when he stood up.

“I’m plastered,” he said, slightly taken aback. “When did that happen?”

Louis laughed. “Around the fourth shot, I reckon.”

“There were four shots?” Harry blinked.

“And a couple of pints as well, mate. And I’ve got no idea what Zayn or this one here—” he gestured, a bit too broadly, at Nick, “—have fed you.”

“Nor do I,” said Nick.

“Dead useful, you are, mate” Louis said. The words should have been teasing but Harry could tell even through the slight haze that they were a bit too harsh. Nick scowled and didn’t answer.

“I’m too drunk for this,” Harry said under his breath—hopefully neither Nick nor Louis heard him—and wobbled a bit as he walked to the loo.

After a few steps the room mostly steadied itself out. Sort of. Or at least he’d thought it had, until he was slamming bodily into Liam in the tiny corridor to the toilet, their heads knocking together. Harry lost his balance completely, because—well, because four shots and some pints before that, and stumbled backward until he hit the wall.

“Are you all right?” Liam asked and, Christ, he seemed actually worried. His face had gone all funny and frowny, and he was reaching out like he was going to touch Harry’s forehead.

“What are you doing?” Harry said. He realized a solid thirty seconds, at least, time was difficult and confusing, after he said it that it was blindingly obvious. Liam was going to reach out and touch to make sure that Harry wasn’t hurt.

Harry knew, instantly and with the absolute certainty of the rather spectacularly pissed, that he couldn’t let Liam touch him. Because—because Liam would realized that Harry thought he was absurd. Or something. It was important, that was what mattered.

Besides, what was Liam doing caring about Harry, they’d spoken all of ten sentences in their entire lives and they were in a pub and Harry _really_ needed to piss.

Liam frowned harder at him, and Harry’s stomach flared with heat. Liam didn’t know him, shouldn’t be trying to take care of him, was probably just doing it because he’d been trained by his PR team to act like a fucking puppy all the time.

“I’m going to piss,” Harry said, before Liam could actually touch him and read his mind. Or whatever impossibly sincere popstars did with their hands. Liam stepped back and let him pass, still frowning. Harry made it the rest of the way into the toilet and—wow, there was an angry red mark across his forehead where he’d banged into Liam. Maybe Liam had actually been concerned.

He dismissed that thought, because being concerned about people who’d not even been good enough to make it past boot camp wasn’t the domain of international pop stars, and Liam probably had more important people to care about. He must have gotten lessons from a thousand people on being nice constantly. He’d not been especially nice on the X Factor, from what Harry remembered, serious and more than a bit snotty.

In the time it took him to piss and wash his hands halfheartedly, Harry stewed on Liam’s obnoxiously over-the-top kindness—he was never even sarcastic in interviews—and decided the best way to cope was with more drinks.

Once he’d made his way back to the bar and slipped up next to Louis, who was evidently having some sort of staring match with Nick, Harry suggested another round of shots. Louis, because he was evidently a great fan of spectacularly terrible ideas—always a great quality in a friend, in Harry’s opinion—agreed enthusiastically, and waved the barman down for three tequila shots.

Harry tossed his back a bit more angrily than was entirely necessarily, but he kind of wanted to be so drunk he didn’t remember Liam reaching forward, his eyes all brown and—brown. Just brown, nothing else. No emotion, because Liam Payne was a robot made of excessive enthusiasm and implausible sincerity.

“One more?” Harry said, calling for the barman before Louis or Nick had even agreed.

It turned out Nick didn’t want his shot, because he’d caught the eye of some boy and was sidling over to him, all flirty and charming and pure hipster. Nick was pretty okay despite everything, but he owned a physical copy of Liam Payne’s debut album—for which Harry had nearly dropped him as a friend—so it was endlessly hilarious that he came off as some suave hipster fuck when he was picking blokes up.

Louis tilted his head at Harry and Harry somehow understood from that that they ought to leave, pour themselves into a cab and pass out still dressed somewhere. He trailed Louis outside and into a taxi, not noticing until far too late that they were heading off the opposite direction from his flat.

“It’s fine,” Louis said before Harry even voiced his thought. “You can sleep at mine, it’ll be easier and you won’t have to be hungover all by yourself tomorrow.”

“Sounds lovely,” Harry mumbled, letting his head drop onto Louis’s shoulder and half-heartedly trying to keep his eyes open.

He vaguely remembered getting dragged up some stairs into an unfamiliar flat and deposited unceremoniously on a sofa next to someone’s—probably Louis’s—jumper; he woke the next morning to a throbbing headache, but also to a glass of water and paracetamol on the coffee table. Louis made him breakfast, and they wasted several hours attempting to play FIFA without actually being willing to turn the sound up or move very quickly.

Predictably that part was a spectacular failure, but by the time they’d given it up Harry was pretty convinced that Louis was one of the greatest people ever. And he was at least ninety percent sure that wasn’t his hangover talking.

\--

Harry was never quite sure whether he ought to be grateful they were big enough now that they actually had to do promotional work for their music or not. It was fun enough, sitting around in third-rate radio stations and listening to Aiden giggle his way through the same questions they’d answered at a different third-rate station the day before, but it was also a bit tiring. It was difficult to keep from semi-discreetly texting Nick or Zayn or Louis under the table, as Matt and Aiden were sociable and giggly enough to keep any interviewer entertained.

At least they were spending a lot of time in London, that bit was always nice. It meant more time to stay out inadvisably late at clubs with Zayn, drinking too much and dancing with anyone willing to stand in their general surroundings. Zayn’s terrible dancing was charming to anyone who know him but a bit off-putting to strangers.

Liam Payne was in London as well, which surprisingly wasn’t without its perks. It tripled the number of times people came up behind Harry and shouted “Liam!” so loud he thought his eardrums would burst. However, it also meant that Louis was in London—of course, spending time with Louis made it even likelier that someone would mistake him for Liam, but at least then he could roll his eyes at someone.

Louis put up with Harry rolling his eyes about Liam, mostly because Harry let him roll his eyes about Nick for no good reason at all. It was completely absurd, why he didn’t like Nick, something about him being an ironic hipster twat, which didn’t make any sense at all because Harry was pretty sure _he_ was an ironic hipster twat and Louis seemed to like him well enough.

“Why don’t you like Liam?” Louis asked one afternoon, sprawled inconsiderately on a bench and sipping daintily at his coffee.

Harry shrugged.

“You can tell me,” Louis cajoled. “Whatever reason it is, I guarantee I’ve heard worse. You should see the rubbish people say about him online.”

“Oh god,” Harry said. “You read what people say about him on the internet?”

Louis grimaced. “Sometimes. Better me than him, yeah? So come on, tell me why you don’t like him. Did he sabotage your chances at the X Factor or something?”

Harry laughed a bit; it was hard to keep from laughing at Louis. “Nothing like that. I barely spoke to him at all on the X Factor, just a few sentences.”

“So what is it?” Louis’s grin was almost too broad for his face, gleeful and just a bit nosy.

“No one is that nice,” Harry said. “He’s got to secretly be an arse, right?” Harry really didn’t want to mention that he was still a bit angry about something that happened years ago, because it seemed petty even in his head.

Louis started cackling like some sort of crazed person. Other people in the square were starting to stare at him, but he doubled over and clutched at his stomach for several minutes.

“Are you all right?” Harry asked. He was starting to get a bit worried; Louis’s face was very red and it looked like there might be tears on his cheeks.

“Good,” he gasped. “Just—Liam. An arse.”

Harry felt slightly affronted by Louis’s reaction. “The only time I tried to speak to him on the X Factor he went off on me about taking the competition seriously! All I was doing was asking if he wanted to get coffee! So he’s been pretending to not be an arse for years and everyone believes it and about ten girls a week come running after me because they think I’m him.” 

That just set Louis off again. “Sorry about the crazed girls, mate.” Louis was still trying to catch his breath. The words were coming out choked and a bit hoarse. “But Liam actually is as nice as he seems. Once he accidentally said something rude about Irish people that he didn’t even realize was a rude comment in front of Niall—that’s his sound guy, he’s Irish—and then he did nothing but apologize for a week. Liam just took everything a bit too seriously when he was younger; I had to tickle him a lot before he loosened up at all.”

Harry frowned slightly, resisting the urge to ask Louis if he was sure.

“Also he bounces everywhere all the time,” Harry added. Because it was true, and it was ridiculous. No one person ought to have that much energy and enthusiasm.

“Okay, I’ll concede that one,” Louis said. “Liam is pretty much a puppy.”

“I hope you never give him coffee,” Harry said, trying to keep from shuddering at the image of Liam bouncing around _even faster_. That level of excitement must be exhausting for everyone around him; not every little thing was worth a huge smile and enthusiasm.

“He had two espresso shots once,” Louis said thoughtfully. “That was a very strange day.”

Harry sniggered. “I imagine so.”

He let Louis drag him out to dinner at what was evidently their usual pub with Liam and Niall that night, though. He didn’t even invite Nick, just to be nice to Louis. They insisted he text Zayn and force him to come along, though, and the whole affair turned out surprisingly pleasant. Liam continued to bounce everywhere, but he also giggled constantly after half a drink and that was actually a bit contagious. Once Liam set off giggling—Louis made a naughty joke—Niall was off as well, and from there it was no time at all before all five of them were clutching at each other’s arms and slumped over the table with laughter.

It was easy to see why Louis (and Liam) liked the place so much, because no one bothered them in the whole time they were there. Harry was pleasantly surprised by the absence of anyone asking for Liam’s autograph; he’d rather expected that Liam would enjoy the attention. 

Louis ordered too many chips and proceeded to share them with everyone, including Niall, who already had his own enormous order of them. Liam and Zayn got into the least vicious vicious argument Harry’d ever seen over whether or not it was acceptable to dip chips in tartar sauce, and they narrowly missed being booted from the pub when Louis made like he was going to dump the tartar sauce in question down Liam’s shirt.

When they finally left it was as a strange heap of people, standing on the sidewalk in a mess of arms around shoulders and waists and mildly inebriated bodies leaning against one another. Louis reached out to pinch at Liam’s nipple—honestly, who did things like that—and Liam flinched away, giggling. “Ow!” he said, but it clearly half-hearted.

“It’s not even half nine,” Zayn said. “We should go somewhere.”

“You mean like a club?” Liam asked, scrunching his nose up. Harry felt the irritation that had been fading flare up again. Of course Liam didn’t like clubs.

“Sure,” Zayn said. “Or one of our flats, I s’pose. There’s not many other choices.”

“I’ve got vodka at mine,” Louis said.

“Of course you do,” said Liam, making a peculiar sort of half-laughing, half-judging face.

“Nothing wrong with keeping alcohol on hand for desperate times!” Louis protested, and everyone except Liam agreed.

“I’ve never heard of a vodka emergency, is all.” Harry honestly had no idea whether or not Liam was kidding, because his face was dumb and impossible to make sense of.

“I have!” Niall said emphatically. “I think we’re having a vodka emergency right now.”

Louis made them stop at the supermarket to buy mixers, which somehow didn’t devolve into a horrible argument—mostly because Niall didn’t seem to care much, and Louis preferred shots anyway. They managed to leave the shop with only orange juice, some sort of frightening cranberry juice substitute, a large bottle of lemonade, sausages because Louis wanted them for the next day, and crisps because Niall apparently had an actually bottomless stomach. Two bags of crisps, actually. Niall was some sort of terrifying creature.

Harry had already been to Louis’s flat several times sober, but it was a different place entirely when five people were attempting to wedge themselves onto the sofa. They didn’t fit, of course, because it was not actually possible to fit four more or less adult-sized—Louis and Niall were pretty small—lads onto one normal-sized sofa. Louis ended up sprawled across everyone else’s laps.

Somehow, because the universe had an active vendetta against him or something, Harry ended up squeezed very tight against Liam, their arms pressed so close he was actually worried they might get stuck that way. He determinedly did not make eye contact, but after a few moments of being so close to each other it was painful, Liam extricated his arm and draped it across the back of the sofa.

This particular development improved things not at all, because suddenly Harry was pressed directly against Liam’s side and—well, the part of him that was still sixteen and terrified and watching a cute, talented boy sing at the X Factor was flaring up.

Harry made a mental note to punch that part of himself in the face later, and reminded himself that Liam had been an arse to him.

Luckily, a bit of irritation was easy to find when Liam was arguing, with unsettling amounts of enthusiasm, that they ought to watch the previous summer’s Pixar film. He was pitching forward on the sofa, his arm pressing against Harry’s back, and it was mostly just confusing as hell. Harry reminded himself of the thousand times he’d had to face a horde of high-pitched teenage girls and tell them that he wasn’t actually Liam Payne without actually making an arse of himself because he did have a career he sort of cared about.

Harry didn’t pay much attention. Niall had strong and mostly loud opinions on why they ought to watch something else, and Harry decided it would be easier to think about other things. Things like when their next gig was, and how big it was, and if he needed to psych himself up for it. He probably did; their gigs were starting to sell out and the crowds knew the lyrics.

Ever since Dannii looked at him, serious and sad-faced, and told him that he was going home, Harry’d not really let himself believe that he could—someone poked him in the cheek.

“Harry,” Louis was saying insistently. “Is Die Hard 3 okay?” Harry nodded absently.

The film itself was nothing spectacular. Harry was mostly glad no one was making him watch The Notebook—he’d seen it there, ominously located right next to Louis’s telly. Before long, Louis and Zayn were arguing loudly over whether or not they could recreate one of the stunt sequences without dying, and Liam was absent-mindedly circling his thumb on Harry’s shoulder.

Despite himself, Harry leaned into the touch. He’d got up early that morning to keep Nick company at work, because he was a good friend. Well really he just wanted to show Aimee up, but also he was a good friend. The point was that he’d been up since arse o’clock and now he was exhausted, and it just felt really nice to have someone touching him, even if he ought to be grumpy that it was Liam Payne, that he was snuggled up on a sofa with Liam Payne and … other things that Harry couldn’t think of because his eyes were drifting shut.

The room was dark when he woke up, but the sounds of several other people breathing were audible. Harry’s head was pillowed on someone’s shoulder, a good shoulder—firm but not boney, and not so skinny his head was about to roll off it. There was an arm around his shoulders as well, tight but not uncomfortably so, and he wanted to curl in closer to the comfort and warmth and fall back asleep.

By the time Harry remembered that the person he’d fallen asleep against was Liam, he was too close to sleep again to be arsed with moving. He woke up in the morning to Louis poking at his cheek and raising his eyebrows. Harry scowled until Louis was laughing instead of looking at him like he knew more than he was letting on.

They woke the others, ignoring Niall’s pathetic whines and Zayn’s insistence he should be allowed to go back to sleep, and dragged them into the kitchen for a shameful attempt at making breakfast with the dregs of things that might once have been food scattered about Louis’s kitchen.

\--

Harry forced himself to leave Louis’s apartment before midday, because he was meant to be rehearsing with Matt and Aiden. He was late, of course, because Louis insisted on pinning him to the sofa for ten minutes and tickling him like mad before letting him out the door, and Zayn wanted his opinion on a possible new tattoo, and Niall grabbed him as he was running out the door to ask about stopping by a band rehearsal sometime.

As usual, Matt and Aiden were taking advantage of the unexpected time to themselves to snuggle on the ratty sofa at the back of the studio. They were nearly on top of each other, sitting so close their heads were nearly touching. Also as usual, it would have been nauseating if it weren’t so cute.

The rehearsal went as well as any of theirs did, which meant they actually got through their entire set once and worked on the bit where Harry could never get his fingers to play anything but the notes he was singing. Of course, then Harry’s mobile started vibrating incessantly in his bag. Because Harry was a good and devoted member of the band, unlike _some people_ who would take a break for anything just to snuggle, he ignored it until it was so distracting that Aiden put down his drumsticks and glared at him.

“Get your damn mobile,” he said.

Upon pulling it out of his bag, Harry had a long string of text messages and, right at the top, a missed call from Nick. The messages were incomprehensible without further context, just variations on the theme of _what a fucking twat_ , which could honestly have referred to about three-quarters of Nick’s acquaintances.

“‘S Nick,” Harry said, smiling wryly at Aiden’s knowing look.

“Who’s he slagging off now?” Matt said.

“Not sure yet,” Harry said as he moved to ring Nick.

As soon as Nick picked up, he started whinging. “Your new best mate Louis is a real pain in the arse, you know,” he said.

Harry rolled his eyes. “You just can’t stand anyone who doesn’t spend half their life pretending they don’t like the things they actually do like.”

“Yeah, yeah. Come to dinner with me tonight.”

“Of course,” Harry said, hanging up before Nick could coerce him into anything else. He tapped out a quick message asking Nick to send him the details about dinner before sticking his mobile back into his bag.

“Do you ever say no to anyone?” Aiden asked. Harry jumped, surprised that Aiden had removed his face from Matt’s for long enough to _notice_ , let alone comment.

“Er,” Harry said. “Sometimes? Maybe?” He scowled at them to make his point, and strode across the studio to make like he was going to push them apart. The threatening aspect of his walk must not have come through, because Matt sniggered quietly at him, but he did separate himself from Aiden and pick his guitar back up.

The rest of the rehearsal was completely bollocks, though. Aiden kept losing his place because he was staring at Matt’s arse—why Harry was in a band with two idiots who were so in love they were actually incapable of keeping their hands off each other, he had no idea—and Harry was distracted by wistful thoughts of spending the evening with Nick, drinking wine and gossiping. Nick’s virulent hatred of Louis was frankly hilarious and he was always willing to listen to people slag off popstars. Like Liam fucking Payne.

Harry probably ought to leave out the bit about Liam having comfortable shoulders, though. Nick would decide he fancied Liam or something, and then tease him about it for the rest of his life.

Which would be bad, obviously, because Harry very, very much did not fancy Liam.

They finally called it quits at even attempting to make music around midafternoon. Harry had three text messages from Nick about dinner, and six from Louis about—well, about nonsense, mostly, but the last one asked how rehearsal had been. He ignored them all to respond with _having dinner with Grimmy tonight and he wants to tell me more about how he hates you_.

Louis’s response was predictably quick and predictably … predictable. _tell grimy I hate him to. and his quiff_.

_of course :) xx_

\--

Dinner was their usual affair, nowhere too fancy but busy enough that no one was likely to overhear anything they were saying. And there was a lot of wine, after several glasses of which Harry was feeling quite verbose enough to start grumbling about fucking Liam.

“He’s horrible, Grimmy.” Harry didn’t think his words were slurred yet, but it was a bit difficult to tell over the loud pop music—Christ, why had they even come to this place—was that _Liam’s_ old single? “He barely drinks and he’s sensible all the fucking time and he likes to watch Pixar films.”

“How can he be sensible?” Nick said, and his words were _definitely_ edging towards slurred. He’d had rather more wine than Harry. “His best friend is the least sensible person I have ever met in my entire life. He was wearing braces over a striped shirt, what the hell kind of outfit is that? And he likes pastel trousers!”

“His horrible taste in friends is a much bigger issue than his questionable taste in trousers. He’s so great but he insists on making me do things with Liam! Yesterday, he tried to convince me that Liam isn’t a twat.” Harry scowled into his wine. “Liam is a twat. He’s a twat with very comfortable shoulders. And nice arms.”

Nick’s eyebrows shot all the way up into his hair. “Nice arms make up for a lot of things, often including being a twat.”

Harry felt himself flushing, even after the wine. “I didn’t mean it like that.”

“You totally meant it like that,” Nick said. Nick’s also a twat, Harry decided. A twat he’s never getting drunk with again. Or maybe he needs to get Nick even drunker, so he won’t remember Harry saying that in the morning.

“A nice arse also makes up for a lot,” Nick continued. “Though maybe not pastel trousers.”

“You know,” Harry said. “For someone who met Louis all of once, you’ve spent an awful lot of time telling me how much you hate him. Oh, also, he wants me to tell you he hates your quiff.”

Nick ignored him, catching the waitress’s eye and ordering another bottle of wine. Evidently Harry wasn’t the only one who’d decided getting extremely drunk was the only way to cope with all this.

After that everything was a bit of a blur—Harry thought there might have been shots at some point, but he wasn’t entirely sure. The room spun a lot, and he probably said more unfortunate things about Liam’s arms. He might have compared Liam to a puppy once or twice or a few dozen times, or possibly mentioned that he’d kind of fancied him a bit on the X Factor. Given his vague memories of Nick vomiting in a pub toilet, though, it seemed unlikely that he’d remember anything Harry had said. Thank Christ.

And, naturally, Harry regretted it all the following morning when he opened his eyes a crack, realized his bedroom was full of _light_ , and immediately squeezed them back shut. He pulled a pillow over his head and wasted at least thirty minutes pretending that he would be able to go back to sleep despite his headache if he just wished hard enough.

Eventually, the distant buzzing of his mobile became grating enough that Harry reached for it; it was making the bed shake ever so slightly, he must have thrown it on there somewhere. Squinting against the light from the room, he sat up just enough to grab it. He had a lot of messages, and the inclination to read exactly none of them.

As he was holding it, it vibrated and a new messaged flashed on the screen. _come watch the match w me 2moro_ , it said. From Louis. Harry decided to answer it later, because if he didn’t put the pillow back over his eyes, he was going to be sick.

\--

Harry’s mobile buzzed in the middle of the following not-especially-sober afternoon spent slumped over the arm of Louis’s sofa watching football and drinking more beer than they really ought. He considered ignoring it, because it was probably something completely useless. Most of his text messages were, just half-finished thoughts from Zayn or pocket-messages from Matt or Nick complaining that he was bored.

“It’s from Nick,” Louis said, glancing down at the screen before Harry convinced himself he ought to actually move his limbs to grab the phone.

“Leave it,” Harry said, but it buzzed again moments later.

“Nick again.” Louis looked wry, maybe, or a bit put-upon.

Harry waved his hand absently.

Minutes later, there was another buzz.

“Fine,” Harry said. “Give it here, Nick’s being needy.”

The most recent message read _i know youre ignoring me to watch footie with louee_ , but the two before it were far more interesting. The first said _your single is on the playlist matt gave me for tomorrow!!!_ and the second, _I CAN’T WAIT TO TELL EVERYONE HOW SICKKKK IT IS_

Harry felt a little faint upon reading them. Their record had been on the radio before, of course, but mostly small, local stations and only then when they really worked at it, going in and phoning and everything short of begging openly to get the song on air. This was Radio 1, this was the Radio 1 Breakfast Show, and it was happening without any crazed effort on their part. Harry’d wondered a couple of times whether Nick might try and get the track played, because he was that sort of a friend, but this was something else entirely.

“You all right?” Louis asked, resting a hand on Harry’s knee.

“Yeah,” Harry said. “Fantastic. Unless I’m dreaming. Am I dreaming?”

Louis pinched him on the arm, hard. Harry shrieked in an extremely dignified manner and did not flail about at all. “Nope!” Louis said, grinning. Harry scowled and rubbed his arm.

“We should take you out to celebrate!”

“Don’t be ridicu—”

Louis cut him off. “It’s happening whether you want it to or not, get to texting everyone.”

“Everyone?” Harry said. “Even—”

“Liam loves your album,” Louis said, giving Harry a look that made him want to shrivel up a bit. “Besides, you’ll be inviting Grimshaw, I assume.”

“I can’t not!” Harry said. “He’s the one playing the record.”

So in the end, Harry didn’t really have a choice in the matter, not really. He sent off texts to everyone, Matt _and_ Aiden even though he really only needed to tell one of them, all the lads—including Liam—and Nick as well. Standing up across the room, Louis had barely had time to start finding a restaurant before Aiden was ringing Harry, screaming into his ear and Harry screamed right back.

It wasn’t so impossible, really, but he’d never let himself think that it might actually happen, their single on Radio One. Things had been building for a few weeks now but. Christ. Harry needed someone to pinch him.

The rest of the time until Louis threw his arms around Harry’s neck and made him overbalance onto the sofa was a blur of emotion; Harry wasn’t sure whether it was joy or panic, but it made his heart pound and his eyes well up. “It’s just one play,” he said, either to calm himself down or to calm Louis down, he wasn’t sure.

“Shut up,” Louis said, punching him a bit harder than Harry would really have liked; he winced a little. “It’s fantastic, it is!”

Harry buried his face in Louis’s neck and tried to keep from blowing it totally out of proportion.

He’d mostly managed to calm down by the time they got to the restaurant, a nice Indian place Louis had got a private room at, because he evidently had decided not to care that they would most likely end up having a food fight. Or an actual fight, considering that Louis and Nick were both there.

Predictably, their table was outrageously loud, with Niall yelling at Liam down the entire length, and Nick and Aiden enthusing over some band even Harry’d never heard of, and of course Louis complaining in his ear about people who insisted on only liking music no one had ever heard of.

They really just ought to fuck, Harry decided halfway through his curry, and bit his lip to keep from voicing the thought to Louis, who would have been deeply offended at the suggestion he’d ever let a hipster as filthy as _Nick Grimshaw_ touch his dick.

“Wait, you ate _what_?!” Harry heard Zayn say—screech, really—to Niall, and he was effectively distracted from his thoughts. Apparently, Niall ate some sort of dubious tripe in Italy once, because they put it on his pasta and “well, if they put it there it was edible, right mate?”

Liam looked completely horrified—“This is why I don’t let you and Josh go out by yourselves,” he said—and when Harry met his eyes, he made a subtle gagging expression. Harry grimaced back at him, nodding just a bit. Maybe Liam wasn’t so terrible. Maybe the wine and the curry were making him crazy. Liam gave him a secret smile and Harry felt warm all over. Definitely the wine.

It was nice, though, being out with everyone. Even with Niall laughing too loud and Zayn squirming where Louis had stood up to tickle him and Matt and Aiden making their usual sickening eyes at each other and Nick debating whether he ought to ask the waiter to change the music to something “less painful.” And even with Liam.

Liam who was smiling at him across the table and biting his already-pouty lower lip and who was all flushed from giggling or from wine or maybe from the way that Louis was reaching over with the hand he wasn’t using to torture Zayn to tug at one of his nipples. Watching the way Liam’s whole face scrunched up when he smiled, with his eyes going so squinty they were nearly closed but his smile so huge and enthusiastic—Harry was getting a bit hypnotized.

“Congratulations,” Liam said once he’d managed to fend Louis off, his voice a little rough from laughing. “About your record, I mean. The Breakfast Show, that’s fantastic!”

It ought to sound condescending. Every time Liam had a new single out, it was on every radio station in—in the fucking world, probably, repeated over and over until everyone wanted to scream every time they heard it. Even if they were good to start out with. Liam did interviews on every major radio show and probably made boatloads of money and just. How did he sound so sincere when he congratulated Harry on this comparatively minor triumph?

But his eyes were all stupid and crinkly and happy and he looked so earnestly excited. Like someone else’s record getting played—once, just _once_ , and probably never again because hordes of people would complain Nick didn’t play his klaxons over it or something—was the best thing that had happened to him all day.

Liam fucking Payne just didn’t make sense at all.

“Thank you,” Harry said, trying to keep his confusion out of his voice.

“You deserve it, your record is incredible,” Liam said. Harry tried not to fall off his chair. It, well, it was one thing for Louis to tell him Liam liked his music, but it was another thing to hear Liam say it in that overly sincere voice he had, the one that made it sound like he really honestly meant every single word that escaped his lips.

Harry’d always thought Liam Payne wasn’t the type to listen to anyone’s music but his own, but then. He’d thought a lot of things. It was possible he needed to be reevaluating a lot of the things he’d assumed about Liam, which. Well, that was okay.

It would be more okay if Liam hadn’t pulled him into a crushing hug as they left the restaurant, tugging until Harry’s face was tucked into his neck somehow, despite Harry being taller.

“Seriously,” he said. “That’s so fantastic about your record. And your whole album is so amazing, I wish I could make music like that. Er. Not that I don’t love getting to sing, but all the harmonies you get to do! I’d love to see one of your recording sessions sometime—oh god, I’m babbling, aren’t I?”

Harry shrugged. “A bit, I s’pose. I don’t mind.” Liam was evidently tipsy, and even giddier and more excitable than usual for it. And rambling about how much he loved the music _Harry_ made and—that wasn’t playing fair, even years of practice at scorning everything about Liam didn’t keep Harry from feeling like he needed to pinch himself.

“Thanks,” he said weakly.

And then Niall grabbed at Liam’s arm, dragging him away from Harry with slightly slurred enthusiasm about something to do with sound something that Harry didn’t understand at all—Niall’d probably been talking to Nick—and Harry was left standing on the pavement alone and more than a little dumbstruck.

\--

The following morning, Harry dragged himself out of bed at some horrifying hour for long enough to make a cup of tea and turn the radio on. After, he curled up under the covers to listen to Nick ramble on about Finchy’s abominable taste in music and popstars who think they’re too good to get up early—a list that evidently did not include Liam Payne, because Harry had three whingey texts from Louis that he’d been woken up by Liam at half six _just to listen to the radio_.

 _Oi_ , Harry sent back.

Louis was apparently too tired or grumpy or busy scolding Liam to respond, so Harry sipped his tea slowly and tried not to fall asleep before Nick got to the bit where he introduced their record. He managed it, though, and was mostly alert when Nick’s familiar voice got a bit gleeful as he introduced “Signs of the Apocalypse by Havoc Origin.”

Harry’s stomach went a bit wobbly; imagining it was so very different from actually hearing Nick say it and then fade into _their actual record_. He sent Aiden a text that was mostly exclamation points and, after a moment’s hesitation, allowed himself to smile as broadly as he could manage. After all, he was alone in his room, no one would see.

When his phone buzzed a few minutes after the track—and Grimmy’s familiar post-track teasing—ended, jolting Harry from mostly-asleep to mostly-awake, he was briefly confused. He wasted a few minutes eyeing his phone and struggling to find the energy to reach for it and read the text; when he finally did, he saw a painfully sincere message from Liam. _ur song is amazingg and ur awesomeeee too_.

Harry’s stomach did a strange kind of flopping thing and he read the message about four times before he managed to tap out a response.

Because he was sleepy, obviously. He sent Liam a quick _thanks_ and then curled up to sleep for a few hours longer. It was difficult to unwind, though; Harry kept thinking about hearing their song, about the earnest enthusiasm on Liam’s face as he’d rambled about liking Harry’s music the night before, about Liam getting up stupid early to hear it on the radio—or maybe Liam always got up stupid early. It was probably that, Liam certainly seemed like the type.

Before Harry could sort it all out—if it was even possible to make sense of Liam at all ever—he was asleep, to be woken hours later by a phone call from Aiden informing him that he was an hour late for rehearsal, and that they’d already put off starting by having sex once.

Harry threw his mobile across the bed, suddenly and unpleasantly awake, yelling that no one wanted to know that as he stumbled around his room in search of a pair of trousers that weren’t unreasonably filthy.

He managed to get to their studio less than two hours after he was meant to show up, with the help of a taxi and after failing to shower, which meant he probably reeked of sweat and Zayn’s stale cigarette smoke from the night before.

Rehearsal was kind of an exercise in time-wasting, regardless. It was good to play their songs but, well. They’d already done a small tour of the UK so they could play everything off the album, and all of them were close enough to being workaholics to practice on their own time regardless. Harry wasn’t sick of playing Signs of the Apocalypse yet but—well, he found himself thinking about what it must be like for Liam, who’d been singing some of the same songs since his first tour after the X Factor.

He must hate them by now, Harry thought—know them so well he could sing them in his sleep, have sung them so many times he dreamt about them, have them so ingrained on his mind they were rote. But then Harry thought of the times he’d seen Liam perform them, and remembered how sickeningly enthusiastic he’d always seemed. Even for his first single, which had unexpectedly gone to number one as a result of screaming girls who remembered him from the X Factor and that he’d been playing nonstop since then. The enthusiasm that had had Harry so convinced Liam must be an utter twat, playing up things he didn’t feel for crowds of thirteen-year-olds screaming his name so loud he probably couldn’t hear himself sing—the enthusiasm Louis had assured him was completely genuine.

Well, mostly Harry wished he weren’t spending quite so much time thinking about Liam at all, and if he really had to be thinking about him, couldn’t it be about something less … troubling? It would be all right to think about Liam’s arms for a bit, maybe. Thinking about Liam’s arms didn’t entail completely reevaluating Liam as a person. Liam had always had good arms, it was part of the reason Harry had possibly fancied him a bit when they were at bootcamp, that and his voice and the way he seemed so quiet and determined but also so confident and.

Harry shook his head to clear the memories; that had been years ago and Liam had rejected him anyway. There was no point in reliving it all, the only good thing that had come of it had been meeting Zayn. Besides, Matt was saying his name with a tone that implied he’d tried to get Harry’s attention a few times already.

“Hmm?” Harry said.

“Chris wants us to run through the setlist once, and then you can go back to seducing whoever you were thinking about.”

“What? No.” Harry frowned. He hadn’t been—

“You had your seduction face on, don’t try to deny it. I’ve seen it enough times to know.” Aiden was nodding along with Matt’s words, because of course he was, and when Harry looked to Chris a bit pathetically, Chris just shrugged helplessly. Harry pouted.

“I call ‘em like I see ‘em,” Chris said. “You were looking at your mic like you wanted to have its children.”

Harry probably just needed to get laid, that would get rid of any unfortunate thoughts he might be having a about Liam. He put it all from his mind as best he could while they ran through their set, focusing more on Aiden’s still-hilarious singing faces. The rehearsal was uneventful, except for the bit at the end where Aiden started deliberately exaggerating his disconcerting eye movements to see if he could make Harry laugh in the middle of a line—it worked, of course, and Chris rolled his eyes and made them do the whole song again.

After, Matt dragged them out to dinner over Aiden’s protestations that they had plenty of food at their flat and Harry’s that he didn’t want to be their third wheel. Despite their insistent questions and attempts to ply him with liquor, Harry stubbornly refused to discuss what he’d been thinking of—in fact, he refused to so much as admit he even had a seduction face.

But curled up in bed that night, he spent a long time staring at his mobile and started four different texts to Louis. All of them were about Liam.

Harry blamed the four glasses of wine Matt had bought him.

\--

Louis desperately wanted to go bowling. Harry could tell because the first text about it had six exclamation points and the second had more—enough that Harry wasn’t going to count them.

Well, it would probably be fun, and it wasn’t like Harry had anything better to do. Harry was bored enough to haul himself out of bed at the crack of dawn to sit in the studio during Nick’s show just so that he’d have something to do. Maybe he should befriend some of the afternoon DJs, so that at least he wouldn’t have to get up stupid early. Greg James seemed nice enough, yeah?

Bowling with Louis and whoever Louis decided to invite—which would probably include Liam—couldn’t possibly be as miserable as getting up early enough to keep Nick company at half six.

 _I’m inviting Grimmy_ , Harry send back, taking a bit of vicious pleasure in imagining Louis’s face upon reading the message. _and Zayn_ , he added.

 _fine_ , Louis replied—and they were evidently going bowling that night.

Nick only agreed reluctantly, after Harry promised him to listen if he needed to complain about Louis.

When they arrived at a bowling alley so unfashionable no one would ever look for a proper popstar there (Louis’s doing, certainly), Liam and Louis were engaged in some sort of tussle outside. Liam was holding one of Louis’s wrists firmly but Louis was using his other hand to attack Liam’s nipple. Nick looked at them like he might throw something, and Harry just grabbed him by the arm and dragged him inside. Liam and Louis trailed them, though it’s more like Liam dragging Louis by the ear. Niall and Zayn were late.

When they finally deigned to make an appearance, they were all smiles and giggles and Harry was fairly certain that Niall’s pupils were a smidge too wide. If they hadn’t spent all afternoon smoking up, Harry would have eaten his foot. Liam stuck Niall with a look that clearly conveyed his disapproval—because of course Liam disapproved—and returned to setting them up for the bowling. Louis’s main contribution to this was buying beer for all of them, which was admittedly more of a sacrifice than it sounded, given the number of trips it took him to carry it all over and the amount that Niall could drink.

By the time most of his second pint was gone, Harry couldn’t stop giggling. Louis was doing some sort of victory—defeat?—dance in front of the lane, and Liam was watching incredulously. Next to Harry, Nick was rolling his eyes—well, Harry wasn’t looking but he assumed Nick was rolling his eyes, because that was the most typical Nick reaction to someone making an arse of themselves in public.

That wasn’t true at all, Nick’s usual reaction to public arse-making was to egg the idiot on and/or join in himself, but Louis was evidently the wrong kind of arse.

“Why does he insist on being ridiculous all the time?” Nick asked, his words crisp and sharp. Glancing over, Harry saw he’d barely touched his pint.

“‘S just what he’s like,” Harry said, rather less crisply.

“It’s obnoxious,” Nick said, as Louis grabbed Liam by the wrists, forcing him to abandon his barely-sipped-at pint and dance badly in celebration of—Harry glanced at the scoreboard—Louis’s strike.

“You’re obnoxious,” Harry huffed.

Of course, Louis picked that moment to overbalance and—without letting go of Liam’s wrists—slip into the lane itself.

“Shit,” Zayn hissed, barely audible over the loud music.

“Oh for Christ’s sake.” Nick looked like he was about ten seconds from storming out of the bowling alley and—Harry didn’t want that. In part he didn’t want that because he didn’t want to have to take the tube home. Though the tube might be preferable to a car ride with a viciously angry Nick.

Some man who might be security was approaching them, looking unhappy, as Liam and Louis struggled to get to their feet on the slick wood. Every time Liam nearly managed it—the perks of sobriety—Louis grabbed at him for leverage and he went crashing down. Louis was still giggling incessantly.

Niall eyed his pint sadly, an expression Harry had come to associate with him being forced to abandon unfinished food. “We’re going to get kicked out, aren’t we?”

The security guard type helped Liam and Louis up. Liam, at least, had the decency to look properly sheepish, though his shoulders were stiff and there was clearly some sort of burgeoning anger under his skin. Louis, for his part, was standing light on his feet and looking nearly as happy as before he’d slipped and probably got them all banned for life.

“You lads need to leave,” the security man thing said. Louis giggled but didn’t resist; Liam looked like he’d just been told he’d failed utterly at everything he’d ever wanted in life.

For all that Harry was aggravated at being forced to leave, sort of, he couldn’t ignore the way his stomach tightened and familiar anger flared up at Liam’s seriousness. He looked almost like he’d never been booted from anywhere for being an arse before, which Harry would absolutely have believed except he’d apparently been friends with Louis for years.

“Is this actually happening?” Nick said. “Am I going to have to leave a bowling alley because a teenaged popstar’s drunk best mate got us kicked out?”

For lack of anything better, Harry said, “He’s not actually a teenager. Neither of them is.”

“You’d know, you spent enough time hate-stalking him.”

Harry ignored Nick, because it was the only way to deal when he got into a mood like this. There would be no reasoning with him; the most important thing to do now was going to be keeping him from insulting Louis to his face. Catching Zayn’s eye over Niall’s head, he mouthed “Nick’s surly tonight,” and Zayn nodded. Harry scampered to join them, letting Niall wind an arm around his waist and drunkenly attempt to whisper to him about football.

He determinedly ignored Nick’s glares and pointed mutters, and especially the way Liam’s eyes rested heavy on him. Liam had no reason to be watching him like that, not when he could be giggling with Louis, which seemed to be all he ever did. Either Liam was tense and strange and serious, or he was laughing at Louis. Harry wished he’d not had to leave his beer inside, because more alcohol would have helped a lot with not thinking about that constantly.

“So, what now, lads?” Louis said. “The night is young, the world is ours—”

“No pubs we’ll get kicked out of,” Liam said. “One place booting us is plenty for today.”

“I’m going home,” Nick hissed in Harry’s ear. Harry didn’t complain, for which Nick would probably give him an inordinate amount of shit tomorrow, but he had it coming, being in a snit like that.

“See you later,” Harry said.

The rest of them ended up curled around each other on the sofa in Louis’s flat, and Harry was starting to think every night they went out would end like this. Not that he minded, not when Louis was carding his fingers through his hair softly and Niall was telling some sort of ridiculous story about a goat, and Liam was smiling huge and crinkley-eyed and he didn’t look tense at all.

Not that Harry especially cared whether or not Liam looked tense, of course. He pressed up into Louis’s hand and Louis responded, letting his short nails drag across Harry’s scalp. Harry pointedly didn’t allow himself to think about whether or not Liam’s hands would feel any different, his fingers so long and nicely shaped and—not thinking about it. Right. Maybe it was the beer doing it to him.

They didn’t even bother with the pretense of a film, just put on a record too quietly to be anything but background noise, something to fill the silence, and talked over the entire thing anyway. Liam was perched on the back of the sofa, Zayn settled between his legs and Niall’s head leaned against his knee. The hand of Niall’s that wasn’t curled loosely around Zayn’s wrist was gesturing animatedly as he told some absurd story about the hoops he’d had to jump through getting all the equipment for a gig Liam was playing next week—some medley type thing Liam was doing it even though it was below his pay grade.

“Wait,” Harry said, slower than usually and a little blurry from Louis’s relaxing fingers. “Is it the one at Shepherd’s Bush Empire on Wednesday?”

Liam and Niall both nodded, and Harry said “We’re playing that as well” before he thought it through.

“I know,” Liam said, turning bright red as soon as the words had left his mouth. “Er,” he added. “Your band is one of the reasons I really wanted to perform, I liked it so much last time.”

Harry was so charmed by him it was actually a little painful.

“Is it rude to say I liked playing right after you?” Liam continued. “Because I don’t mean it as—”

“No, it’s fine,” Harry said. “I’m perfectly all right not having thousands of screaming teenagers chase me down the street.”

Liam shrugged. “It’s not so terrible. They’re really very sweet.” He looked so disgustingly sincere that Harry wanted to punch him a bit. It didn’t really make any sense. Zayn was staring up at Liam like he’d hung the moon.

“They’re sweet when they don’t try to tear you limb from limb,” Niall said, sounding maybe the slightest bit bitter. Louis laughed, which might have been cruel, or perhaps it was just an inside joke. Harry wasn’t entirely sure. Liam didn’t say anything, but his smile slipped a little bit and he reached around to touch the back of Niall’s neck softly.

Harry tried so valiantly to hate him and he just couldn’t manage to summon the burning resentment he was so used to feeling, that knot of lingering anger that Liam was rude and full of himself and probably a twat as well. The feeling had disappeared, gone sometime between the first time he’d seen Liam smile at him like he was the most exciting thing in the world and when Liam had told him so earnestly about loving Harry’s music. He curled in closer to Louis, resting his head against his knee, and let Louis’s gentle fingers lull him almost to sleep.

\--

“Oh my god,” Harry screamed about ten seconds after he got the door open, his voice reaching a pitch he didn’t think he’d been able to hit since he was sixteen. On the sofa of _his dressing room_ were Nick and Louis and they were both more naked than not, which would have been perfectly fine if Nick hadn’t had his hands all over Louis’s bare arse and they weren’t snogging.

In short, Nick and Louis were shagging on his sofa and for all that Harry advocated being comfortable with nudity and sex with his friends he didn’t— _not like this_.

Liam came running back down the corridor frighteningly quickly. “Are you all right?” he yelled out, because of course he did.

Harry’s life would be a lot easier if he could go back to the time he was completely sure that Liam was ten-zillion-percent pure twat, because when he thought that, he didn’t have to bother thinking about things like how adorable it was that Liam did go running down corridors to make sure people who didn’t even really like him weren’t getting eaten by dressing room monsters.

“No!” Harry shrieked, still shriller that he really wished he were. “Nick—and Louis—and _naked sex_.”

“What?” Liam asked, his face scrunching up in a different way than it did when he smiled. Harry took a moment to hate himself for knowing that.

“Nick! And Louis! Shagging! In my dressing room!”

“Oh,” Liam said, still looking a bit baffled. “But—they can barely spend ten minutes in the same room without getting into a fight.”

Harry resisted the urge to rub his temples, and decided he probably deserved a prize for it. Of course Liam didn’t understand the idea of angry sex. Some days he was genuinely sure that Liam was a children’s cartoon come to life just to torment him.

“Did you not notice all the sexual tension?”

“No.” Liam frowned, and it was so obvious he was searching his memory for any moment he’d picked up on Nick and Louis possibly wanting to kiss each other breathless instead of just yelling until they were blue in the face that he actually circled back around from frustratingly unaware to adorable again.

“Trust me,” Harry said. “No one spends that much time talking about how much they hate someone unless they secretly want to fuck their brains out.” He forced himself to not think about how much time he’d spend telling Nick that Liam was a twat, and also to not think about how nice Liam’s arms were. “Besides, Nick told me when he was drunk that Louis has a nice arse.”

“Louis does have a nice arse!” Liam said. The fact that he was offended Nick had to be drunk to praise his friend’s arse might be the cutest thing about him. Harry hated that he found enough things about Liam adorable that he had to rank them. Liam’s hair was absolutely not on the list, not even the one time Louis had goaded Liam into teasing _Harry_ for always flopping his hair about by trying to mimic it. “But er,” Liam added. “You can share my dressing room if you like. Since yours is—occupied.”

“Thanks,” Harry said, a little surprised by how sincerely he meant it. There wasn’t much left for him to do, but it would be nice to be able to sit down for a few minutes, and safely avoid Matt and Aiden’s preparations. He still wasn’t entirely sure they didn’t involve sex, and he’d already seen more than enough of that for today. There was a difference between a comfortable and open friendship and seeing two of your best mates with their hands on each other’s naked arses.

“But,” Liam said, still spluttering a bit. “Grimmy and Louis?”

“Sometimes the best way to deal with someone you really want to punch in the face and can’t is to shag them,” Harry said. 

Liam made a strange and silly sort of scrunched up face of confusion, and the temptation to slap him lightly across the cheek was too much—it was all squishy and red and just _there_ , Harry couldn’t not touch it. So he reached out and pushed against Liam’s cheek, not hard enough to hurt but with enough force to cause Liam’s head to turn.

All Liam did was giggle, his eyes so crinkly they were nearly closed and his smile enormous. He didn’t even swat back at Harry playfully, which is what Louis or Nick or anyone else remotely normal would have done. It made Harry want to hit him again, just to see what would happen. He resisted manfully, instead sitting down on the sofa and considering whether he ought to avert his eyes if Liam needed to change his clothes.

On the one hand, Liam probably didn’t take the same view of nudity as Harry—he’d learned, over the years, that very few people were unbothered by other people stripping down in front of them with no preamble—but on the other hand, Liam was exceptionally fit. It seemed unlikely Harry’d ever get to see his arse up close and unclothed unless he took advantage of this opportunity.

Well, there had been that one time Louis had tried to debag Liam at the pub, but Liam had quick reflexes and had got his hands on his belt in time to keep his trousers up.

Unfortunately for any thoughts Harry had of getting to stare at Liam’s arse, he slipped into the toilet to change, emerging a few minutes later in a horrifically tight t-shirtand jeans tighter than any Harry’d ever seen him wear. They might be painted on. Harry’s eyes might be bulging out of his skull. He blinked twice, hard, and thought about pinching himself. Maybe this was all a sexy dream.

Of course, that possibility meant he was having sexy dreams about Liam fucking Payne, which was a whole other problem Harry would have to deal with. At least he wasn’t having them about anyone supremely odd. There had been one about Judi Dench he desperately wished he could forget—

And then Liam was shaking his head about and, after a moment, Harry realized he was trying to imitate Harry’s own hair. Before he could stop himself, he was leaning forward and laughing out loud. Liam looked up at him through a mess of curls that wouldn’t stay pushed off his forehead, blushing but with a smile so wide it made Harry’s heart lurch.

He was so fucked.

So, so, so fucked.

At least Nick would never be able to give him shit about it ever, because he’d been caught fucking Louis in Harry’s own damn dressing room.

Harry shook his own hair, attempting to knock it onto his forehead in a loose approximation of Liam’s usual hair, but it was too long in the front and just dragged into his eyes. It was impossible to keep from laughing at Liam’s giggles, though, all open and unassuming and honest.

It wasn’t until he was standing on stage, holding his mic and glancing back to back sure that Matt and Aiden were ready to start that Harry realized he’d been too distracted by Liam to be nervous about performing at all.

\--

It wasn’t that Harry didn’t want to spend time with Louis, he really did, but sometimes Louis got it into his head that he needed to be doing everything all the time—Harry recognized the impulse from all the times Nick had exhibited it—and Harry was tired.

“Come on,” Louis said, nearly bouncing on the balls of his feet. “Come out with me, I want to go dance and get pissed.”

He had a good sales pitch. It had taken Nick a while longer to realize that the “get pissed and dance badly” sell would pretty much always work on Harry, but Louis had got it worked out right away, and was clearly willing to abuse it.

Evidently Harry’s desire to see Louis was going to outweigh his exhaustion and desire to spend the whole night dozing on the sofa. “Fine,” he said, trying not to seem too grumpy about it.

Three shots in and Louis was leaning against the bar, elbowing Harry and trying to gesture subtly to some girl he evidently thinks is fit. And she was pretty, all legs and curved waist and a fantastic smile but. Well, Harry had his suspicions.

She wandered over, her hips swaying—of course Louis was good at this, because of course he was, all pretty smiles and cheekbones—and Harry weighed his options. Being a complete twat didn’t come naturally to him, but he’d had plenty of time to learn from the best. Meaning Nick, of course, who excelled at nothing quite as much as he excelled at being a spectacular asshole to people who annoyed him—but also Louis, who was nearly as good, from what Harry had seen.

“How’re things with Nick?” Harry asked, as soon as the girl was within earshot.

Louis spluttered. “There is no thing with Nick,” he hissed, but it was too late. The girl was already frowning and edging away, raising an eyebrow at them.

“I really think sex counts as a thing,” Harry said. “The other stuff counts too, but it’s easier to be confused about that.”

“What—how—but—”

It was really quite funny, watching Louis fumble for words. He was usually so much more controlled, and Harry couldn’t quite stop himself giggling a bit. Louis smacked him in the arm, hard.

“We didn’t have sex,” he managed to say, after what would have been a suspiciously long time even if Harry had not seen them actually in the process of having sex.

He just watched Louis, raising his eyebrows and holding a skeptical expression he had definitely never practiced in the mirror just so that he could use it on Nick. Because that would be odd.

Regardless, it worked.

“Okay, maybe we did once,” Louis said. “It wasn’t like, you know.” He flailed one of his hands about a bit, and Harry understood _his dick was not in my ass_ from it. “Just a bit of mutual wanking, really. Er, and maybe a bit of snogging.”

“And now what, you’re never going to talk to him again like he was some stranger you pulled at a club?”

Louis shrugged. “Ideally.”

Harry punched him on the arm, not nearly as hard as Louis had hit him earlier. “He’s my best friend, you twat.” After Louis pouted at him for a moment, Harry added, “And so are you. It’s nice you two are finally getting along.”

“You seem to be getting on better with Liam,” Louis said, and Harry knew, somehow, that it was loaded. He scowled at Louis.

“Is that how it’s going to be, then?” he asked and Louis grinned devilishly.

“Fine,” Harry said, glancing around the club. He could try to find someone to go home with; it had been ages since he’d got laid. But no one was really catching his eye, and he was working very hard at not thinking about how his eyes kept lingering on tall blokes with broad shoulders and arms that looked like they’d be able to pin him down easily.

Besides, if he started chatting up someone who looked like that, Louis would laugh at him for the rest of his life, and Harry would never be able to tease him about possibly fancying Grimmy ever again. Louis, for his part, was very determinedly eyeing only girls, though Harry knew from long conversation and the occasional night out that he was fairly equal opportunity. That, as much as anything else, had him suspicious, especially after an extremely fit man made like he wanted to buy Louis a drink.

At least he wasn’t particularly interested in anyone himself, so it wasn’t much of a hardship when his mobile went. He waved it at Louis and gestured to the door, hoping that Louis wasn’t so pissed he didn’t get Harry’s point.

Outside, Harry answered his still-ringing phone; it had been going long enough he was fairly certain that the person calling him had hung up and rung him again. It was Nick, of course.

“Hello?” Harry said.

“‘M pissed,” Nick said, by way of greeting.

“You’re pissed as many nights as not, and you don’t usually ring me to tell me,” Harry said. Nick was a bit uselessly clingy at times and tonight was evidently going to be one of those times.

“You blew me off to go out with a twinky popstar’s hanger-on.” Harry frowned at Nick’s words, trying to parse out who exactly he was calling a twink, because there wasn’t actually enough alcohol in the world to make Liam look like—whatever.

“I saw you last night,” Harry said. “I see you nearly every day!”

“Do you fancy Louis?” Nick asked. “B’cause I can see how you could, he’s tiny and adorable and has a very pinchable bum and his tongue—Harry, his _tongue_.” Nick’s words were slurred but not incomprehensible. It might have been nice if they’d been incomprehensible, though.

“Stop! Nicholas, _stop_ , I don’t want to hear that. I really don’t fancy Louis at all, he’s just a mate. _I don’t want to hear about his tongue_.”

“Such a good tongue,” Nick said. Evidently he was too drunk to stop himself rambling. “And his bum, it’s so lovely and grabbable and soft, like the bum of an angel.”

Harry was going to need more shots just to purge this entire conversation from his memory.

“I wonder what his tongue would feel like if—”

Right, that was crossing a line.

“If you do not stop telling me about your sexual fantasies about Louis right this instant I am going to hang up on you and then ring you at seven tomorrow morning and scream in your ear.”

Nick shut up.

“Can I take it from this you’re interested in a repeat performance, hopefully not in my dressing room this time?”

Harry crossed his fingers this wouldn’t devolve into another monologue about pornographic things he wanted to go to Louis, but Nick actually managed a concise answer. “Only when I’m pissed. The rest of the time he’s a complete twat.” His logic was maybe a little questionable, but Harry wasn’t sober enough to be inclined to argue.

“Good to know,” Harry said, confident Nick was too plastered to catch the dryness. And then he hung up, before Nick could start off rambling again. To try and keep Nick from just ringing him again to ramble, he sent off a quick text— _Never ever talk to me about Louis’s dick again ever_.

“Who was that?” Louis asked, appearing out of nowhere next to Harry.

“Your gentleman caller,” Harry said. Louis managed to roll his eyes and glare at the same time; Harry was a little impressed.

“What did he want?” There was anger coiled just below the surface in Louis’s voice, and Harry couldn’t quite decide whether it was worth provoking him or not.

“To talk about you,” he said, which seemed pleasantly neutral. “He had lovely things to say about your bum.” Well, that was less neutral. But Louis’s whole face lit up briefly, though it went completely blank the moment after.

“Oh?” he said. Harry nodded. “Right,” Louis said. “I’m going back in to drink more and try to forget that your mate likes my bum.”

“You already knew he liked it,” Harry called after Louis. “I saw his hands all over it.”

Louis flipped him off without turning around. “Fuck off, Styles!”

Harry ran toward him and jumped onto his back as best he could, yelling “Never!” into Louis’s ear significantly louder than he needed to in order to get his point across. Louis’s shriek was deeply satisfying.

The rest of the night was a blur of shots and laughter and the pretty girls who kept just appearing next to Louis, though he didn’t so much as kiss any of them. Harry ignored the strange feeling in his head, blaming it on the alcohol, and let Louis keep buying him drinks. Nick didn’t text him back; hopefully he’d fallen into bed and passed out there, rather than in an alley somewhere.

\--

Harry woke the following morning with a horrible throbbing in his head, and his throat felt swollen. There was a glass of water on his bedside table, he knew, because he’d put it there the night before to help with the inevitable hangover. Grimacing at the pain in his head, Harry struggling into a semi-upright position—and immediately started coughing so hard he was concerned that he was going to throw up.

He managed to drink a bit of the water—it didn’t help much with the coughing—before he was too tired to sit up any longer and curled back up under the covers. Even with the duvet pulled up nearly over his head, he couldn’t seem to get warm. Groaning, Harry reached for his mobile and texted Louis _I’m ill and I think I’m going to die_. Whining was a very important part of being ill.

Harry was asleep before he got a response, through he woke up a couple hours later to a message from Louis that said _youre not going to die unless you have pneumonia then you might die_ , which was not the most comforting thing he’d ever read.

 _What if I have pneumonia and die?_ he sent back.

 _you wont die_ was all the response he got to that. Harry curled in on himself and tried to keep another bout of coughing from happening, but it was to no avail. He didn’t even want to go to the trouble of uncurling and reaching for the water; it hadn’t helped enough to be worth it.

If nothing else, Harry was _aware_ that he was the most annoying person in the world when he was ill. He whined constantly and expected to be waited on hand and foot, and basically refused to do anything at all.

Of course, all that had been much easier to get away with when he wasn’t living alone. At home, Anne and Gemma could usually be prevailed upon to bring him soup and stroke his hair until he fell asleep, and Zayn, despite all appearances, was absolutely the sort of person who took care of an ill flatmate. But Harry had his own flat now, and Zayn was at work regardless, and Harry really desperately did not want to get up to fix himself anything to eat.

He’d mostly fallen back asleep when a knock at the door startled him out of it.

Harry considered yelling to ask who it was, but just the thought of trying to summon that much energy was terrifying. He made a kind of pathetic groan instead, but apparently it worked. The person at the door called out, “I’m coming in, okay? Zayn gave me a key.”

It was Liam. Harry blinked a few times, trying to make sense of Liam letting himself into his flat because Zayn gave him a key. It was hard to think. Or maybe this was all a fever dream, maybe that’s why it made no sense at all.

But then there was a cool hand on his forehead and the bed was dipping softly next to him. “Hi,” Liam said, his voice warm and low. Harry made a weak snuffling noise. “Zayn told me you were ill but that he couldn’t come look after you,” Liam continued, and Harry nodded. His eyes were already falling shut again, and Liam stroking his hair wasn’t helping.

“Go back to sleep,” Liam said, letting his fingernails drag across Harry’s scalp gently. “I’ll stick around until you wake up and make you some soup.”

Harry was too close to sleep to respond to Liam’s words or the way he stood up, taking his hands away. Harry felt kind of bereft when Liam left, and if he’d forced himself to speak, he was fairly certain he would have asked Liam to stay.

Maybe it was all a fever dream.

When Harry woke a few hours later, there was a glass of water on his bedside table, and two paracetamol tablets next to it. He took them by rote, and only noticed once he’d sat up to drink the water that his head was throbbing and his throat ached.

Oh. That wasn’t good, he thought blurrily. He had another concert, one of the Christmas medleys of all kinds of people. Liam was going to be there.

Liam was in his flat. It was Liam who’d brought him the water and the paracetamol, Liam who’d stroked his hair before he fell asleep.

“Liam?” Harry called, though it came out all creaky.

Seconds later, Liam fucking Payne, popstar and heartthrob, was standing in the doorway of Harry’s bedroom in sweatpants and a t-shirt, a concerned frown on his face.

“Are you all right?” he asked, and it was impossible to miss the worry in his voice. “I left you some water and paracetamol, did you take it?”

Harry nodded. “Thanks.”

Liam crossed the room, sitting down next to Harry again. He touched Harry’s forehead with the back of his hand. “You sound terrible. Do you want me to make you some tea? Or soup?”

He wanted tea—just the idea of soup made his stomach churn a bit—but Liam’s fingers were carding through his hair again, and mostly Harry just wanted him to stay. The motion was smooth and repetitive and absurdly comforting. It was like something his mum might have done, except it was nicer with Liam, somehow.

“You need to eat, Harry,” Liam said, the words quiet but clearly audible in the stillness. “I know you’re tired, but if you don’t eat you won’t get better.”

“Some tea would be nice,” Harry said, the words a little slurred. He didn’t quite fall asleep in the time it took Liam to boil the kettle, but he was drowsing when Liam came back in, touching Harry’s shoulder lightly and helping him sit up. Harry didn’t actually need the help, not really, but it was nice. It made him want to curl into Liam and never let him go.

Harry sipped at the tea slowly, letting it soothe his throat and warm him. He shivered a bit when the duvet slipped down to rest around his waist, and Liam looked over at him with concern. “Do you have chills as well as a fever?” He didn’t wait for an answer before he tugged the duvet back up around Harry’s chest. Harry shivered again at the brief touches of his fingers, and refused to let himself think about how that might not have been because of his fever.

Despite Liam having already figured out Harry had chills, he nodded and murmured a yes between sips of the tea—oversweetened, but not by as much as Harry had feared. And infinitely better than having to drag himself out of bed and wobble to the kitchen to fix his own.

Liam moved his arm, Harry saw it in the corner of his eye, and then stilled again. If he didn’t know any better, about Liam’s peculiar standoffishness despite being best friends with Louis and how Liam read too much into every touch, Harry might have though Liam was going to stroke his hair again. That would have been nice.

Instead, Liam walked around to the other side of the bed and sat on the edge stiffly. “Do you want to watch a film? I brought a couple of Pixar ones.” He paused awkwardly, then continued. “They’re my favorite things to watch when I’m ill, so I thought you might enjoy them.”

He looked so uncomfortable that Harry wanted to lunge across the bed and hug him until he relaxed. Why was he here, taking care of Harry, if he was going to spent the entire time being strange about it?

“That sounds nice,” Harry said. “Which films?”

“Er, Finding Nemo, The Incredibles, and Wall-E.”

“Not Toy Story?” It hurt a bit to speak but it was worth it for the adorable way Liam’s face shifted. “Isn’t that your favorite?”

For some reason, the question made Liam’s whole face light up, which didn’t really make any sense with his answer of, “Yeah, but I lent Zayn my DVD to watch with the girl he fancies.”

That was disgustingly adorable of Liam. And of Zayn, who was Harry’s friend first anyway. Harry tried not to let himself get surly about that, because he’d already decided Liam wasn’t so terrible and besides, Liam was sitting on his bed and offering to watch films with him and making him tea while he was ill. Liam was definitely not so terrible. Harry actually had to bite his lip to keep from apologizing for all the times he’d assumed Liam was a twat.

“How about Finding Nemo?” he said instead, and Liam smiled.

“Sounds good.”

After he’d set the film up, positioning Harry’s laptop at the foot of the bed so they could both see, Liam leaned back, too far away from Harry to curl into without having to move, which completely missed the point of watching a movie in bed.

“C’mere,” Harry said, gesturing weakly at Liam until he scooted a little closer, tense and on top of the covers. Harry tucked himself up against Liam anyway, the duvet thick between them but the soft fabric of Liam’s t-shirt comfortable where Harry’s cheek rested on it. He just barely heard Liam exhale a soft “oh” before draping his arm loosely around Harry.

Harry didn’t manage to stay awake for the whole film, drifting in and out of consciousness for the second half with Liam’s fingers running slowly up and down his arm. Liam woke him in time to see Nemo and Marlon reunited, and Harry didn’t cry even a little bit, he was just really sleepy so he had to hide his face where the duvet was bunched between him and Liam.

Well, he might’ve cried a little bit.

His memories of most of the middle section of the film were blurred with sleep and cough syrup but he couldn’t honestly rule out the possibility he drowsily sang “just keep swimming, just keep swimming” with his face pressed into Liam’s shoulder. He didn’t think Liam had complained, though.

It was odd, how Liam never complained when Harry was a twat to him, just smiled and didn’t take the piss when Harry cried at films and snored. He’d not even laughed the time that Harry attempted to play Just Dance and couldn’t seem to make his limbs move at the right times. Louis had laughed so hard Harry’d worried he was going to piss himself, especially after Harry had given up all pretense of doing the correct moves and had made up his own dance.

“Do you want anything to eat?” Liam asked, so close Harry could feel his breath ruffling his hair. “I can’t cook very well but I can order takeaway.”

Harry tried to think about food, but the idea was a bit nauseating and besides, all he could see was the way he’d scowled at Liam and twisted his words around and complained to Nick about him, but now Liam was sitting on his bed and stroking his shoulder slowly because the end of Finding Nemo made him cry.

It was possible Liam was even more amazing than Louis had been giving him credit for.

“Why are you here?” Harry said when he opened his mouth to say that some soup would be nice.

“No one should have to take care of themselves when they’re ill,” Liam said.

Harry’s stomach turned over, and he didn’t think it was from the thought of eating.

“Thank you,” he said.

Liam’s whole face lit up, like Harry hadn’t just thanked him for doing something outrageously kind but had rather told him he was the greatest person in the universe and also that every day was going to be his birthday. It made Harry feel stupidly warm all over, or maybe that was the fever and the piles of blankets he’d wrapped around himself, or maybe it was the way he and Liam were nearly on top of each other despite all those blankets.

“Some soup would be nice,” Harry said, because this was all going to a terrible place. “There are takeaway menus in the kitchen. Er, I’m sure one of them must be for a place that does soup.”

“If not, I’ll run to Waitrose. I passed one on the way here.” Liam sounded impossibly happy for someone who’d basically just offered to go shopping for someone who had never even been properly nice to him.

“Thank you,” Harry said, as sincere as he could manage while still hazy with sleep and illness and exhaustion.

And then Liam got up, which was a terrible unforeseen side effect of him going to get soup for Harry. There was no one left for him to cuddle against and no one stroking his hair and asking him how his throat was feeling; it was all kind of horrid. Harry scrunched himself down under the duvet and pulled at it until it was up nearly over his head, trying to make himself feel as comfortably warm as he’d felt when Liam was next to him.

Nothing worked, not even curling up into as small a ball as he could manage and dragging the duvet up to cover him from the eyes down. The time until Liam returned holding a bowl of steaming soup and a spoon passed in a haze of shivering and fading in and out of consciousness. Harry just wanted someone to rub his back and tell him he wasn’t going to die from whatever terrible and untimely flu he’d caught.

“I think I’m going to die,” he said when Liam appeared in the doorway, a bowl balanced carefully in one hand and another mug of tea in the other.

“You’re not going to die,” Liam said, almost too soothing. Harry didn’t want to be that comforted by Liam’s voice, smooth and sure and kind of like tea with honey. He wasn’t sure if that thought even made sense, but he had a horrible fever and if he wanted to compare Liam to tea then he was going to do it. “Now sit up,” Liam continued, approaching the bed. “You can’t eat soup with the duvet covering your face.”

It sounded like he was talking to a child, maybe, or a baby animal, but it didn’t make Harry want to punch him. It _ought_ to make Harry want to punch him, but instead he just made a terrifying effort and hauled himself into a decent approximation of sitting. He felt weak all over, shaky and unstable and his voice sounded horrible, croaky and raw from coughing.

At least the tea had helped calm the coughing for a bit.

“Can you hold the soup or shall I do it?” Liam asked, somehow managing to ask a question like that without sounding so patronizing it made Harry scream. Instead, he just sounded considerate—like he’d noticed how difficult it was for Harry even to sit up, and didn’t want him spilling hot soup all over himself.

“I can do it,” Harry said, even though he was fairly certain he couldn’t. Something about Liam’s face, or maybe his voice, made him desperately want Liam to think he was able to take care of himself. Responsible. An actual adult who never did things like spend all day on the sofa drinking shit wine and watching GBBO.

Liam probably never drank shit wine.

Because Liam hardly drank.

Liam was really strange.

“Thanks,” Liam said, as wry as Harry’d ever heard him. Harry seriously considered just curling back up into a ball and hiding under the duvet, because evidently at least some of that had been out loud.

“Strange is good,” Harry said, reaching for the soup and trying to keep from looking too pathetic. When had he started to care whether Liam thought he was pathetic? “All my best friends are really strange. I like strange people.”

“Oh?” Liam said, handing Harry a spoon and covering his lap with a large tea towel.

“I like you,” Harry heard himself say.

It was true, of course—he liked Liam entirely more than he wanted to admit or think about. He just hadn’t meant to actually mention that to Liam. Especially right now, when everything was all strange and confusing and blurred from being ill. Or ever, really.

“I like you too,” Liam said. He reached over and helped Harry support the bowl, since evidently one of Harry’s hands wasn’t enough at the moment. Christ, but Harry felt pathetic. He managed to keep from saying that out loud, though he probably ought to credit having a mouth full of soup for a lot of that.

He struggled through the entire—admittedly small—bowl of soup and then, after handing it to Liam to set on the bedside table, curled up against Liam and let himself fall asleep again. It was too much effort to do anything else, especially since Liam curled an arm around Harry and rubbed soothing circles against his back and neck. Harry mostly just tried not to do anything that might be construed as purring before he fell asleep.

\--

When Harry woke, some indeterminate amount of time later, Liam was still next to him, idly scrolling through something on his mobile. His free hand was still drawing distracted circles across Harry’s shoulder, and something about the mindless way Liam was doing it—his attention was clearly on the phone—felt more intimate than anything he’d done for Harry thus far.

“Hi,” Harry said. He couldn’t tell whether his voice was rough from being ill or from sleep. His head wasn’t throbbing as badly as it had been earlier, though. And he was comfortably warm all over instead of shaking incessantly.

“Hi,” Liam replied with a smile, turning toward Harry and moving his hand to rest the back of it against Harry’s forehead. “You don’t feel as warm as earlier, that’s good.”

“Mmm,” Harry said, too much asleep to try for words or sentences.

“Can I get you anything?” Liam asked. Harry wanted to kiss him, and then forced the thought away, blamed it on the fever.

“A glass of water, please,” he said, shifting so that Liam could extricate himself from around him.

Harry stumbled to the loo while Liam was getting the water, and was already curled back up under the duvet when Liam returned with a large glass of water as well as a bottle of paracetamol and some crackers.

“I need to go back to my flat,” Liam said gently.

“Oh.” Harry tried to keep his disappointment off his face, but it was so much more difficult to be ill alone than it was with someone around to bring you tea and soup and cuddles. “Can you bring me more tea before you go?” He didn’t want to whine at Liam about staying, not really, but he couldn’t quite resist either.

“Of course,” Liam said. Because Liam was apparently just like that, exactly as Louis had told him so many times over. Harry might cry. While Liam was off fetching him more tea, Harry uncurled himself enough to take two paracetamol and sip cautiously at the water.

Liam returned with a smile, but instead of crawling onto the bed he walked over to Harry’s side to set the tea next to his water.

Drowsy and confused and warm all over with medicine and sleep, Harry found himself reaching up and kissing Liam lightly on the lips when he leaned down to touch Harry’s forehead. Liam pulled back quickly but stayed close, his forehead nearly touching Harry’s.

“Ew,” he said, crinkling his face up like a kid. “You’re all germy.”

Harry tried to be offended that Liam’s reaction to kissing him was to pull away and make a grossed-out face, but it was really difficult when Liam looked that adorable. It got even harder when Liam leaned back down and pressed a lingering kiss to Harry’s forehead, his lips cool against Harry’s warm skin.

“I think your fever’s broken,” Liam said. “You should be all right by yourself now. But I can leave you the DVDs so that you won’t get too bored.”

Harry forced away the pout he so desperately wanted to use, the one that had kept Anne and Gemma at his side when he was ill so many times. Liam said he needed to go back to his flat, there was probably some very pressing reason for it.

“Thank you,” Harry said. Liam leaned back down and kissed him one last time; Harry wasn’t sure whether Liam lingered too longer or if he was just imagining it because he wanted it to be true.

“It’s nothing,” Liam said. “You’d do the same for me.”

Harry probably wouldn’t, really, but he didn’t want to tell Liam that. Instead he just closed his eyes and slipped back down under his duvet so he didn’t have to watch Liam leave.

\--

He woke alone the following morning, but he felt significantly better. There was still water in the glass on his bedside table, and his throat didn’t feel as raw as it had the previous day. Probably being able to stop coughing while Liam fed him endless amounts of tea had helped a lot.

Or maybe Liam was just magic. That seemed pretty plausible as well. Regardless, the day was markedly better than the one before had been.

Despite Harry’s insistence that he was feeling much better—he’d even managed to crawl out of bed and make his own tea—Liam insisted on coming by to check up on him. It was midafternoon by the time he knocked, waiting for Harry’s hoarse “Come in” to open the door; Harry’d only been awake a few hours, but he’d made it through all of them without dropping off to sleep randomly _and_ he’d relocated from his bedroom to the living room. It was a marked improvement over the previous day.

“How are you feeling?” Liam asked, setting a container of takeaway soup from Waitrose on the coffee table and pressing the back of his band to Harry’s forehead before he got a response.

“A lot better.” He even sounded better, he thought, less like a dying frog than he had the day before. He’d not had a horrible coughing fit in several hours, and his voice was recovering a bit because of it.

“Shall I go heat up some soup for you, or have you eaten?” Liam had moved his hand off Harry’s forehead and was carding his fingers gently through Harry’s messy curls. Harry was mostly trying to keep from falling asleep or making any inappropriately sexual noises.

“I had some tea earlier,” Harry supplied weakly. Liam frowned at him.

“I’ll be back with some nice hot soup for you in just a few moments.”

Just then, Harry’s mobile vibrated where it was tucked between his chest and the back of the sofa. He seriously considered not going to the trouble of pulling it out and seeing who was trying to contact him, but it might be someone important. He’d told Gemma he was ill, and she was sure to have told their mum and … well, he didn’t want either of them to worry.

The message, though, was from Louis. _howre you doing???_ , it said.

Harry typed out a reply, waffling over whether he ought to tell Louis about Liam coming. Louis was sure to tease, but then he probably knew anyway. _Better.. Liam’s come by to make me soup again_.

While Harry was waiting for a response, he set the mobile down on the table, bending his knees up to make room for Liam to sit at the other end of the sofa when he returned holding a steaming bowl of leek and potato soup—Harry’s second favorite supermarket soup. He wondered if someone had told Liam.

His mobile buzzed again, and Liam immediately reached for it—probably just to hand it to him—but then his face went all strange and pinched. He didn’t say anything as he handed the phone to Harry.

Right there as a notification across the screen, it said _see?! He’s not terrible at all!!! Admit you were stupid to not like him_. Liam had read it, obviously, and now everything had gone all horribly awry and, well, Harry wasn’t entirely certain how he felt about Liam anymore, because Liam’s arms were confusing, but he was absolutely certain he didn’t hate him.

It would be a lot easier to sort out exactly how much he didn’t hate Liam if Liam would stop having arms and abs and also his face and his stupid smile and if he could stop using too many exclamation points and letters in all his text messages because he was just so excited about everything all the time. It ought to be tiring and mostly it just made Harry want to make stupid faces right back and then bounce around with him.

Scowling and not meeting Liam’s eyes, Harry replied to Louis’s text with _not until you admit you want more from Grimmy than just his hot hot prick_.

When Harry finally looked up, Liam’s eyes were fixed on his lap and he was twisting his hands together uncomfortably. “It’s not what it looks like,” Harry said.

“Do you not like me?” Liam asked, his voice a little unsteady. Harry wanted to punch himself in the face, but he was still too weak to manage it properly, and Liam wouldn’t do it for him even as a favor. Liam probably didn’t even kill fruit flies, he probably caught them and let them go outside his flat.

“No!” Harry said, and then realized that might have sounded completely wrong. “Not that! I just—you were so—”

He realized as he was speaking how stupidly petty it was going to sound, telling Liam that he hadn’t been perfectly polite to Harry during one conversation so many years ago, but not saying anything seemed even worse. Liam looked like someone had told him it was never going to be his birthday again ever, and Harry wanted to cry a little bit just looking at his face.

His mobile vibrated in his hand and he ignored it.

“I asked you to get coffee when we were both still on the X Factor and you just frowned at me and said no and…” Harry trailed off. It sounded even more petty saying it out loud than he’d expected.

“I was sixteen and overwhelmed and fucking terrified!” Liam said. Harry had never heard him curse before; his stomach twisted uncomfortably upon hearing it, and not in a fun way.

Harry couldn’t bring himself to speak, because there was nothing he could say that would be comforting at all, save perhaps “I like you now,” but that felt so loaded he choked on the words every time he tried to force them out. It wouldn’t mean “I like being mates with you,” it would mean “I like your stupid smile and sleeping on your shoulder and how you’re always excited and I want to see if I can like kissing you.”

Because that had worked out so well the last time he tried it.

“Harry?” Liam’s voice was even wobblier than earlier. Harry’s self-loathing was increasing proportionally, and he didn’t answer. “Are you going to be okay? I don’t want to leave you here to die but—” he swallowed hard. “I don’t want to be here right now.”

If Harry made Liam cry he was never going to leave his flat again. He desperately wanted to think that Liam wasn’t the type to cry but he was starting to think he’d spent too much time watching Liam try to make everyone around him happy. Of course he’d be upset by Harry thinking he was a twat, especially based on one conversation when he was sixteen.

Harry leaned forward and buried his face in his hands, because he knew himself well enough to know his eyes were going to get all red and teary from trying not to cry and Liam didn’t need to see that.

“I’ll be fine,” he said, and he sounded almost normal. He wasn’t croaking nearly as badly as he had been the day before, and his voice wasn’t too unstable.

“Feel better,” Liam said. Harry could feel him getting up to leave. Somehow, he sounded sincere. Despite everything, he honestly wanted Harry to feel better.

Harry screwed his face up, telling himself that it was okay. He’d not fancied Liam, not really. Just thought he was attractive and a nice person and fun to be around and probably had a lovely mouth for kissing.

The voice in his head that said “that’s a crush” sounded unsettlingly like Gemma.

It would be nice if she were here, to cuddle with him and tell him it would be just fine, the same way she had when he had cried over people at college and when he’d got cut from the X Factor and a thousand other times. He considered sending her a pathetic text— _I think I just made the boy I fancy cry_ —but all she would send back would be assurances that she wished she could hug him, and that wouldn’t make anything any better at all. Louis was out of the question as well; he’d known Liam so much longer than he’d known Harry, there was no question whose side he would take.

In the end, Harry just curled up on the sofa, pulled the blanket he’d dragged out there with him over his head, and pretended that the tears on his cheeks were from exhaustion and anxiety about being recovered in time for their gig coming up.

\--

Harry wrapped both hands around his mug of tea and wished, briefly, that Starbucks wasn’t so crowded. He and Louis had managed to find a table and two empty chairs but they were pressed so close their legs were touching. Louis was sipping some sort of extravagant coffee-chocolate-cream-sugar-caramel-god-knows-what concoction. Harry had tea, because he was still worried about his throat.

“How’re you feeling?” Louis asked. “I hope you’re not ill anymore, because sitting this close I’m guaranteed to catch anything you have.”

“Much better, thanks,” Harry said. “I haven’t coughed so much I thought I was going to die in days.”

“Glad to hear it.” Louis’s voice was a bit dry. “Are you going to be up for your gig next week?”

“I’ve not got much of a choice, have I?” Harry said, working to keep his worry off his face. “Matt and Aiden can’t do our set by themselves, and we can’t afford to cancel.”

Louis patted him on the head, which should have been the most awkwardly condescending thing that had ever happened. It mostly just felt comforting. Harry decided to avoid investigating those emotions too closely. He didn’t have anything to say in response, so he just sipped at his tea and spluttered a bit when he nearly burned his tongue.

“How did you and Liam get on?” Louis asked. It was a loaded question if Harry’d ever heard one; Louis knew enough to know that any claims that they’d fought or that Liam was useless as a nurse would be blatant lies, and saying that he and Liam had got on would have obvious consequences of Louis teasing him forever.

Nevertheless, Harry opted to tell the truth. Lying to Louis would have just felt off.

“It was nice,” he said. “He made me soup and let me fall asleep on him during Pixar films.”

“Liam let you sleep on him while you were ill?” Louis asked incredulously. “He never does that.”

Harry frowned. “But—”

“He doesn’t like germs,” Louis said. “Like, he proper dislikes them. He doesn’t even like sharing drinks.”

“Oh,” Harry said. That was—something. Something important, probably.

“I was surprised he even wanted to go look after you,” Louis continued. If it were anyone else, Harry would have thought they were oblivious, but Louis was clever enough for this all to be calculated. He knew more than Harry, as well. He didn’t just know that Harry had a crush on Liam; he knew what Liam thought of Harry.

“He was lovely,” Harry said, biting his lip. “And then I totally fucked everything up.”

“Oh?” Louis raised one eyebrow; Harry felt like he was being put on trial. “Liam looked upset when I saw him last week but he wouldn’t say why.”

It felt like someone was squeezing Harry’s heart; Liam had still looked sad about Harry having hated him when they were both arsehole teenagers. Well, maybe Liam was never properly an arsehole teenager, maybe he had been just as lovely then as he was now. Harry swallowed, ignoring a feeling in his stomach that felt a lot like what he imagined being punched felt like.

“He saw your text about me not liking him and …” Harry trailed off, unsure what exactly came next. _And he nearly cried_ wasn’t something he thought he’d ever be able to say out loud without wanting to punch himself, and everything else seemed so presumptuous. He’d no idea what Liam felt in that moment, except that it had upset him. He could have been angry or hurt or just felt betrayed that Louis would befriend someone who didn’t like him.

(He’d looked sad.)

(Harry tried not to think about it.)

“Oh bugger,” Louis said. That wasn’t a good sign at all. “He—” Louis cut himself off, sipping at his coffee concoction instead of finishing his sentence.

“He what?” Harry asked. He felt a bit ill again, like his stomach was churning too much. He set his tea down; trying to drink it right now probably wouldn’t go terribly well.

Louis just shook his head, not saying anything. Harry stared into his tea, not wanting to see the twist of Louis’s frown and the disappointment it held—or maybe just the disappointment he was imagining it held, projected from his own emotions onto Louis’s unreadable expression.

He thought of the way Liam’s face had fallen last week and the way seeing it fall had made his stomach lurch unpleasantly. He thought of sixteen-year-old Liam with his straightened hair and how stupidly Harry’d fancied him, all for his serious eyes and his voice and without really knowing anything about him. And he thought of Liam twirling Louis around the bowling alley, out of time with the terrible music and clumsy because neither of them could decide who was leading in their inventive take on ballroom dancing.

That day, he’d wanted to be the person dancing with Liam. He’d have dipped him properly, bent him backward until he was squawking about being dropped on the dirty floor, and then maybe pulled him upright into a kiss.

The kissing was probably the important bit of that, though the more he thought about it, the more he realized he also wanted to listen to Liam talk too-sincerely about his music and why he loved singing, and take him on silly dates to children’s movies so they could argue about them afterward until neither of them could keep a straight face. But that ended with kissing as well, because once they were giddy with laughter, Harry would lean across the table and kiss Liam softly.

He wanted a lot of things with Liam, and many of them seemed to end in kissing. Though a few went rather farther.

Saying it out loud didn’t seem necessary, not with the way Louis was looking at him archly.

“Finally caught up with the rest of us, have you?” he asked.

Harry scowled at him. “At least I’ve not been shagging him and pretending it’s because we don’t get on.”

“Hush,” Louis said. “Today we’re talking about your problems, as you’ve nearly broken my best mate’s heart.”

The flip Harry’s heart did at that wasn’t nearly as despairing as the earlier ones had been.

\--

Still—a grand gesture was in order. Something to show Liam all the things Harry didn’t think he could say with words while looking into Liam’s eyes. Mostly because he was terrified all he’d see would be sadness and disappointment and then he’d lose all ability to function and just cry for the rest of his life.

Besides, Liam deserved something insane and over-the-top and stupidly romantic. Harry’d not talked to Louis about it, because Louis was a twat and would have gloated, and he’d not talked to Nick because Nick was also a twat and would have teased. Really, they deserved each other, it was a pity they hadn’t sorted their relationship out beyond occasionally having angry sex. (It hadn’t been just once; Harry’d glimpsed some interesting bruises on Louis’s hip the other day and Nick had had a vicious lovebite on his neck the same day.)

Though he wasn’t entirely sure where Liam stood on public almost-declarations of something-that-might-be-love either. Liam was—well, Liam was discreet about his private life. In all the years he’d been nauseatingly famous, Harry’d seen very little about where he might be sticking his prick. Er. Not that he’d been looking.

He’d definitely been looking, said an obnoxious mental voice that sounded a lot like Nick when he was hungover and tetchy.

But that wasn’t the point. Harry needed to focus—and he needed to not be sick. Just because he was going to go out on stage and sing their usual songs and then—he swallowed hard—make a gesture for Liam, that was no reason to be sick.

“Get a grip, Styles,” he hissed to himself, trying to imagine Louis saying it and looking at him disdainfully. “You can do this.”

He didn’t let himself think that it might not work, that Liam might hate him more for it. And he pretended Matt wasn’t looking at him a bit strangely from across the room.

“You all right, mate?” Aiden asked. “Are we still doing—”

“Yes,” Harry said. “Absolutely yes.”

Aiden raised an eyebrow. He wasn’t quite as good at it as Louis and Nick but the gesture still radiated skepticism. “Are you going to throw up on stage?”

“Not helpful, babe,” Matt admonished, ruffling Harry’s hair. They were nearly the same height now; it had been so easy for him to do that when they’d first met and then Harry had grown so much. But it was comforting, something they’d been doing for as long as Harry could remember knowing Matt. Aiden wrapped an arm around him, rubbing his knuckles against the side of Harry’s neck, and Harry pressed into it a little, letting the warmth of Aiden settle his nerves as much as anything could.

“Are you two sure you’re okay doing this?” Harry asked. They both grinned and repeated for the thousandth time that they were more than happy to help Harry out. Harry squeezed his eyes shut one more time and didn’t open them until someone knocked at the door and told them it was time to head to the stage.

Walking out into the room of people screaming, it felt a bit like he’d left his stomach backstage. Liam was here somewhere; he was performing later and all the performers were already in the building, but Harry’d been avoiding him. He hoped Liam was watching, except for how he didn’t because the idea of Liam watching made everything a thousand times more terrifying.

But the first few songs went off okay and the audience even sang along, screaming their lyrics back at them out of key but contagiously enthusiastic. Maybe this was what it felt like to be as famous as Liam, Harry thought stupidly, nearly bouncing in place from the high of it all. His stomach was settling a bit and there were things to think about besides how horribly wrong everything with Liam might go.

Regardless, he’d told Matt and Aiden to save the change of plans for last, so that Harry would be as relaxed as he ever was on stage.

The crowd wasn’t deafening after their last song, not the way he knew it would be for Liam later, but it was plenty loud. Harry could hear his own name as well as Havoc Origin and Matt and Aiden’s names being screamed. A girl near the front tried to start a “We want Liam” chant and was quickly shushed by the people around her; Harry felt a certain kinship, though. Maybe they didn’t want Liam in the same way—well, actually, she probably did want to snog Liam—but he understood the sentiment of just _wanting Liam_.

“Er,” he said into the microphone. The crowd … did not exactly go silent. “Er.” He said it louder this time, waiting until the noise died off enough he could be heard. “We’re not ending with our usual song tonight,” he said, tentative. “I’ve convinced Matt and Aiden to help me out with this, because I accidentally really upset a mate of mine and, well, I’d like to make it up to him. So, er, I’m sorry. And I hope you like the song.”

A ripple went through the room, whispers being shared, probably people wondering who he’d upset and why he was apologizing so publicly. But Harry just swallowed, closed his eyes, and opened them again to look at Matt and Aiden.

They started playing the song Harry had made them rehearse so frantically before this gig. It was a familiar one to just about anyone with ears at this point—Liam’s first big single. It made it a bit obvious who Harry was apologizing to, maybe, but Liam had talked in a few interviews about how much he liked the song, how glad he was that he _did_ like the song, since he had to perform it so frequently.

The song itself wasn’t anything extraordinary, just the type of sweet, slightly catchy pop Liam usually sang, but it was about falling in love with someone too good for you, which had seemed apropos, somehow. It was easy for Harry to sing the lyrics he’d heard so many times the year it came out and really mean them, because it was rather how he felt about Liam. Just—hopefully it wasn’t too subtle.

It went over well with the audience, so many of them here to see Liam anyway, and they sang along even louder than they had with the Havoc Origin songs. When Harry finally allowed himself to look away from the crowd, during the last chorus, he saw Liam standing in the wings, one hand pressed over his mouth and his eyes wide.

Harry nearly forgot the words, tripping over the syllables he never thought he’d be able to forget.

As soon as he finished singing he turned to look at Liam, ignoring the screams and letting Matt and Aiden do the last of the talking, thanking everyone for being a fantastic audience. Liam was staring at him and it was clear the only thing stopping him from running onto the stage was Louis’s vice grip on his arm.

“Go,” Aiden hissed in his ear, shoving him toward Liam.

Harry felt as sick had he had when he was about to walk onto the stage; it must have shown on his face because Liam rearranged his features into a comforting smile. Harry wanted to touch him, press his face into Liam’s neck and taste the skin there. And touch the skin between Liam’s fingers and the birthmark on his neck and his floppy curls and the flat plane of his stomach.

“Hi,” he said instead.

“Hi,” Liam said, biting his lip. “That was nice,” he added. “You didn’t need to do that.”

Harry shook his head. “No, I—can we go somewhere private?”

“Of course!” Liam said, his smile a bit too wide.

They slipped into a room backstage—from the few things scattered around, Harry assumed it was Liam’s dressing room—and Liam closed the door behind them.

“I’m sorry,” Harry said as soon as they were alone. He spoke too fast, nearly tripping over the words. “I’m sorry I made assumptions about you based on one conversation when we were both stressed out of our minds and I’m sorry I watched all your interviews for years just to think about what a twat I’d decided you were and I’m sorry I tried not to like you—” He stopped, gasping for breath a little. Liam stared at him, biting his lip again. He wasn’t smiling anymore, but he wasn’t frowning either.

“I fancied you a little bit on the X Factor, that’s why I asked you to get coffee but then you said no and, well, I don’t think I ever really stopped fancying you, it just turned into—I don’t know, a hate-crush or something.”

Liam looked at Harry a bit askance. “A hate-crush? Is that something that exists?”

“What else are Louis and Nick doing?” Harry said, wry.

Smiling, Liam said, “Fair point.”

Now Harry was the one biting his lip.

“I fancy you as well,” Liam said, and Harry jerked his head up. Before he’d managed to get any words out—he was about to say “What?”—Liam was kissing him. It was soft and delicate, a lot like the previous time he’d kissed Harry, but this time Harry wasn’t delirious with fever and he processed what was happening quickly enough to wrap a hand around Liam’s neck and kiss him back.

“Oh,” Liam said against his lips. Harry felt his lips curve into a smile, felt the soft puff of Liam’s breath when Harry dragged him into a deeper kiss, this one with tongues and teeth and one of Liam’s hands sliding into Harry’s hair to hold him close.

They lingered for a moment, and then Liam pulled back. His lips were red now, redder than usual. “Do you really not hate me, then?”

Harry shook his head vehemently. “I really, _really_ don’t. I tried to but it didn’t work at all, you’re too wonderful.” Liam blushed; he blushed so easily and Harry loved it, the light flush across his cheeks and the way he always focused too hard on the floor.

Unable to resist now that he had tacit permission, he leaned in to kiss Liam again, working his tongue between Liam’s lips to explore his mouth. Liam sighed into it and let Harry kiss him, opening his mouth and scraping his nails across Harry’s scalp.

“I have to go and perform,” Liam said a little weakly when he pulled away. He kissed Harry again, a quick peck that made Harry desperately want to lean in for more. “We—we should go out after.”

“Or we could stay in.” Harry knew his grin was a bit mischievous, but that was the point. “We could go back to mine, it’s more private.”

Liam blushed again, but he met Harry’s eyes and smiled as well. “I’d like that a lot.” And then he smiled so much his whole face crinkled up, and he said, “Or we could just skip my performance entirely. They’ve already heard one song, that’s enough, right?”

Harry burst out laughing, letting his head rest on Liam’s shoulder until his breathing evened back out. “Go, there’ll be a riot if all they hear is Havoc Origin covering your first single badly. Besides, I want to watch.” He couldn’t wipe the smile from his face as he pushed Liam out the door of his dressing room, pressing one last quick kiss to his cheek before he headed to the wings.

When he found Louis backstage, Harry still hadn’t managed to stop smiling. “You look like a serial killer,” Louis said, poking at one of Harry’s dimples.

“Shut up,” Harry said, putting a hand over Louis’s mouth so that he couldn’t talk during Liam’s first song and keeping it there even after Louis licked it. Louis’s pout was more than enough to make up for the saliva, and besides, he was busy watching Liam.

\--

**epilogue**

 

“We’re not together!” Louis and Nick said nearly simultaneously.

They were, however, curled around each other in the booth of Louis’s favorite pub, Nick’s arm around Louis’s shoulders and—from what Harry could see—Louis’s leg draped over Nick’s. They certainly looked like they were together. And yesterday, Harry had seen an extra toothbrush in the bathroom at Nick’s.

Idiots.

Liam was still at the bar, having offered to buy the first round of drinks. He never said it, but Harry rather suspected he felt odd about having so much more money than the rest of them. Still, he pressed a quick kiss to Harry’s cheek as he set a pint down in front of him, and Harry edged his chair over so he could curl up under Liam’s arm.

All the others were coming later, but there was something really lovely about sitting with Liam and Louis and Nick, even if Louis and Nick were stubbornly insisting they weren’t dating despite being hilariously domestic half the time. Liam caught Harry’s eye and glanced over at where Nick was drawing shapes on the back of Louis’s hand where it rested on the table. Harry sniggered quietly and Louis’s eyes snapped up to him. “What?!” he snapped.

“Nothing,” Harry said, though Liam tittered a bit.

“They’re making fun of us, love,” Nick said.

“They’re twats,” Louis replied.

Harry ought to be offended but Liam was stroking the side of his arm, comfortable and familiar, and Louis and Nick were just so hilariously dense together. He couldn’t keep from smiling into his glass.

“How was rehearsal?” Louis asked, after a long silence during which he’d evidently been hypnotized by Nick’s hand moving against his.

“It was amazing!” Liam said, maybe more enthusiastic than he needed to be, considering that rehearsal had—as usual—consisted in great part of Matt and Aiden snogging. “It’s so different with more than one person, and because they write the music they can change it if they need to.” He was nearly bouncing in his seat, like an unsettlingly attractive puppy. “I’d love to be able to perform with them or something, just to try and work like that. It would be so different but so much more fun.”

Liam paused and frowned, looking over at Harry. “That wasn’t presumptuous, was it? I just really like your music.”

Harry kissed him to keep from saying anything unnecessarily sentimental; his stomach was flopping about pleasantly and he felt warm all over. The idea of touring with Liam made him feel like he was being wrapped up in happiness, though he wasn’t entirely sure he wanted to get into that with Nick and Louis there to raise their eyebrows and laugh. Harry just scooted his chair closer to Liam so that they could press closer together and wished they weren’t in a pub where he couldn’t just climb into Liam’s lap and curl up there.

It wasn’t long before they heard Niall coming in, trailing Zayn and Matt and Aiden. All of them ended up squeezed together so closely around the table it was almost as nice as curling up with Liam at home.

And besides, he’d get to curl up with Liam as soon as they went home. They’d snuggle up on the sofa in one of their flats, pressed up against each other and kissing lazily until they fell asleep or got each other undressed enough to be motivated to stay up, the same way they had nearly every night for the past month.

Eventually they would go on tour but it was so easy for now, spending as much time with Liam as possible and curling into each other’s space literally and metaphorically. And luckily, because of the current situation where he was obviously dating but not willing to admit to dating Nick, the amount of gloating Louis could do about the whole thing was deeply limited.

In response to some comment he hadn’t been listening to, Harry stuck his tongue out at Niall—it was an appropriate response about eighty percent of the time—and pressed his face into Liam’s neck, dropping a quick kiss to his pulse point and then closing his eyes. Really, he couldn’t ask for anything else.


End file.
